Article Dans Une Revue International Review of Pragmatics Année : 2020

Whatever Floats Your Boat: A Corpus-Based Investigation of Definiteness, Quantification, Modality, Presuppositional Content, Scalarity and Epistemic Stance with Wh-Ever Words

Résumé

The meaning of indefinites of the wh-ever paradigm has been the object of a number of claims regarding its ignorance and indifference readings. These are examined here in the light of a systematic analysis of 2500 occurrences of the wh-ever paradigm in the Brigham-Young-University TV-corpus. Contrary to general assumptions, ignorance and indifference readings are not separate, as they are found jointly in 27% of occurrences. Each reading is sensitive to contextual cues: ignorance associates with animacy, and is compatible with plural nouns; indifference associates with independent use, subtrigging by modals and singular nouns. Finally, scalarity is not a dominant dimension of the wh-items’ interpretation, being associated with subtrigging by modal expressions and focus stress, and requiring an indifference reading. These items are defined as evoking an unidentified referent requiring identification belonging to an open-ended series of possibilities.

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hal-05042465 , version 1 (22-04-2025)

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Pierre Larrivée, Patrick Duffley. Whatever Floats Your Boat: A Corpus-Based Investigation of Definiteness, Quantification, Modality, Presuppositional Content, Scalarity and Epistemic Stance with Wh-Ever Words. International Review of Pragmatics, 2020, 12 (2), pp.206-245. ⟨10.1163/18773109-01202002⟩. ⟨hal-05042465⟩
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