Wird Schon Stimmen!
- The article puts forward a novel analysis of the German modal particle schon as a modal degree operator over propositional content. The proposed analysis offers a uniform perspective on the semantics of modal schon and its aspectual counterpart meaning ‘already’: Both particles are analyzed as denoting a degree operator, expressing a scale-based comparison over relevant alternatives. The alternatives are determined by focus in the case of aspectual schon (Krifka 2000), but are restricted to the polar alternatives p and ¬p in the case of modal schon. Semantically, modal schon introduces a presupposition to the effect that the circumstantial conversational background contains more factual evidence in favor of p than in favor of ¬p, thereby making modal schon the not at-issue counterpart of the overt comparative form eher ‘rather’ (Herburger & Rubinstein 2014). The analysis incorporates basic insights from earlier analyses of modal schon in a novel way, and it also offers new insights as to the underlying workings of modality in naturalThe article puts forward a novel analysis of the German modal particle schon as a modal degree operator over propositional content. The proposed analysis offers a uniform perspective on the semantics of modal schon and its aspectual counterpart meaning ‘already’: Both particles are analyzed as denoting a degree operator, expressing a scale-based comparison over relevant alternatives. The alternatives are determined by focus in the case of aspectual schon (Krifka 2000), but are restricted to the polar alternatives p and ¬p in the case of modal schon. Semantically, modal schon introduces a presupposition to the effect that the circumstantial conversational background contains more factual evidence in favor of p than in favor of ¬p, thereby making modal schon the not at-issue counterpart of the overt comparative form eher ‘rather’ (Herburger & Rubinstein 2014). The analysis incorporates basic insights from earlier analyses of modal schon in a novel way, and it also offers new insights as to the underlying workings of modality in natural language as involving propositions rather than possible worlds (Kratzer 1977, 2012).…
Author details: | Malte ZimmermannORCiDGND |
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DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffy010 |
ISSN: | 0167-5133 |
ISSN: | 1477-4593 |
Title of parent work (English): | Journal of semantics |
Subtitle (German): | A Degree Operator Analysis of Schon |
Publisher: | Oxford Univ. Press |
Place of publishing: | Oxford |
Publication type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Date of first publication: | 2018/09/11 |
Publication year: | 2018 |
Release date: | 2021/07/02 |
Volume: | 35 |
Issue: | 4 |
Number of pages: | 53 |
First page: | 687 |
Last Page: | 739 |
Funding institution: | German Science Foundation (DFG)German Research Foundation (DFG) [SFB 632] |
Organizational units: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften / Department Linguistik |
DDC classification: | 4 Sprache / 41 Linguistik / 410 Linguistik |
Peer review: | Referiert |
Publishing method: | Open Access / Green Open-Access |