Pragmatic Repair Driven by Indexicality
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Pragmatic repair driven by indexicality Item Type Article; text Authors Kim, Hyuna B. Publisher University of Arizona Linguistics Circle (Tucson, Arizona) Journal Coyote Papers: Working Papers in Linguistics, Linguistic Theory at the University of Arizona Rights http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ Download date 27/09/2021 19:44:02 Item License Copyright © is held by the author(s). Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/271016 ©Hyuna B. Kim Coyote Papers 21 (2013) UA Linguistics Tucson, AZ, U.S.A. Pragmatic repair driven by indexicality Hyuna B. Kim UNM, CE [email protected] Abstract This paper aims to account for Double Accessibility effects found in Korean. Clearing out confusions in the previous discussion on the phenomenon, it claims that Korean does not have a Double Access reading in a semantic sense, unlike English, but Double Accessibility effects arise as a result of pragmatic repair which is employed in order to interpret a focused indexical element causing a conflict in the interpretation process. The advantages of the pragmatic analysis defended in this paper over the movement analyses proposed in the literature will be shown in details. 1 Introduction English present under past sentences have a peculiar reading of ‘Double Accessibility,’ which is illustrated in the following Abusch’s examples (1991): (1) a. John believed that Mary is pregnant. b. John said that Mary lives in Chelsea. Kim, p.2 1 INTRODUCTION The basic intuition is that the embedded present tense in (1a) or (1b) does not overlap with the utterance time only, but also with the time of the believing or saying event of the matrix clause, as Comrie (1985) and Smith (1978) pointed out. More specifically, in (1a), the event of Mary’s being pregnant holds at two time intervals, the time of John’s believing and the utterance Time, yielding the peculiar reading where Mary was pregnant at a certain past time when John had such a belief and her pregnancy continues up to the utterance time. The continuous event from one past time interval to the utterance time characterizes double access sentences1. Thus the phenomenon might not be best couched in the term ‘double accessibility’ because with that term one might reasonably think of the case of temporal access to two separate or discounted temporal intervals, which is not available for double access sentences as in (1a) and (1b). Anyways, the double access sentences in (1a) and (1b) present a very interesting case such that the embedded present tense does not behave as a simple deictic tense, but somehow it receives a so-called ‘double’ temporal interpretation. A question to arise from a typological perspective is whether the same phenomenon can be found in other languages such as Japanese and Korean. Ogihara (1996) affirmed it by providing the Japanese data below: (2) Taroo-wa Hanako-ga ima Taroo-TOP Hanako-NOM now Tookyoo-ni i-ru to it-ta-yo. Tokyo-at be-PRS that say-PST ending Reading #1: ‘Taro said that Hanako was in Tokyo at that time’ Reading #2: ‘Taro said that Hanako was in Tokyo at that time and (the speaker assumes that) she is still in Tokyo at the utterance time’ 1 The double access reading of (1a) and (1b) would become clearer when compared to the following sentences: (i) John believed that Mary has been pregnant (ii) John said that Mary has lived in Chelsea The sentences in (i) and (ii) are also considered as double access sentences, and they are considered to have the very similar meaning with (1a) and (1b), except that the continuity of the embedded event in question becomes obvious by the presence of the aspectual auxiliary ‘has’ in (i) and (ii). Kim, p.3 1 INTRODUCTION According to Ogihara (1996), the sentence (2) has two readings, one of which, Reading #2, is a double access reading. In Reading #2, the subordinate event of ‘Hanako’s being in Tokyo’, the speaker assumes, continued from the past time of Taro’s saying it up to the utterance time2. But, there is an obvious difference between English in (1) and Japanese in (2), because the double access reading in Japanese is just one of possible readings with present under past, unlike the English case in (1) where the double access reading is obligatory. Ogihara (1996) attributes the difference to the presence / absence of obligatory tense movement of the embedded present tense. Ogihara (1996) claims that English that has 2 Ogihara (1996) shows that the double access reading for (2) can survive even when a past time denoting adverb that prevents the upstairs and downstairs event from overlapping due to time conflict is added to the matrix clause, as below: (i) Taroo-wa kinoo Hanako-ga ima Taroo-TOP yesterday Hanako-NOM now Tookyoo-ni i-ru to it-ta-yo. Tokyo-at be-PRS that say-PST ending Reading #1: ‘Yesterday, Taro said that Hanako was in Tokyo at that time’ Reading #2: ‘Yesterday, Taro said that Hanako was in Tokyo at that time and (the speaker assumes that) she is still in Tokyo at the utterance time’ JOgihara (1996) presents the sentence in (i) as the evidence for a double access reading in Japanese. However, there are several things that have to be checked out before we consider the readings of (i) as supporting evidence. First, we need to have a grammatical device to preclude from possible readings under discussion a direct quotation interpretation which is most of time available with the complementizer ‘-to’ in Japanese and ‘- ko’ in Korean. It could be the main source of confusion. Given that, Reading #1 has to be excluded from the discussion because it is a direct quotation interpretation. The past time denoting adverb ‘kinoo’ (yestereday) and the utterance time denoting one ‘ima’ (now) definitely cannot go with each other in the simultaneous reading between the matrix and embedded clauses. What is means that the simultaneous reading, Reading #1, is made unavailable when the time conflicting adverb ‘kinoo’ (yesterday) is added to the sentence (unless you assume that Japanese can have a non-deictic time adverb ‘ima’). But, in a direct quotation construction, such a reading is possible. By still including Reading #1 for (2), Ogihara (1996) unintentionally brings confusion to discussion. Kim, p.4 1 INTRODUCTION an obligatory movement triggered by an inherent deictic present tense gets an obligatory double access reading with present under past, while Japanese with only optional tense movement for a ‘sometimes’ deictic present tense gets an optional double access reading. Yet, note that Ogihara (1999), turning from Ogihara (1996), tried to provide a generalized account for double accessibility across languages by positing that that both English and Japanese alike have deictic and anaphoric tenses and hence they have a double access reading in the same fashion. The only difference between the two languages lies in the fact that the double access reading in Japanese is somehow obscured by the presence of a strong simultaneous reading of present under past3. Now, would the story work for other Japanese type languages such as Korean and so could we claim that Korean also has double access sentences? It looks like we can find in Korean an example corresponding to the Japanese double access sentence in (2), as below: (3) Taro-nun Hanako-ka cikum Tokyo-ey Taro-TOP Hanako-NOM now Tokyo-in iss- ø-ta-ko malhay-ss-ta be-PRS-DCL-COMP say-PST-DCL Reading #1: ‘Taro said that Hanako was in Tokyo at that time’ Reading #2: ‘Taro said that Hanako was in Tokyo at that time and (the speaker assumes that) she is still in Tokyo at the utterance time’ Reading #2 shows that the sentence in (3) is to be associated with two time intervals, some past time and the utterance time, yielding a double access reading. Then, can we conclude that Korean has an optional double access reading) as in Japanese? Given the parallel pattern, 3 The Ogihara’s (1999) improving effort does not seem to be successful. He is trying to provide a unified account for English and Japanese double access sentences, but it costs him explanatory adequacy because he inevitably ignores the apparent differences between the English and Japanese double access sentences. For instance, while a double access reading is available only with certain predicates like ‘live’ or ‘be pregnant’ in English, but such a restriction does not apply to Japanese or Korean double access sentences. The Ogihara’s (1999) account fails to provide an explanation for the difference. We will come back to this issue in the following section. Kim, p.5 1 INTRODUCTION it looks just simple but the actual picture of the double access reading in Japanese or Korean is complicate. Before we jump into the simple conclusion, we need to eliminate all the interfering factors and make clear whether or not the alleged double access reading is real in a semantic sense in Korean. In a nutshell, I reject the parallel analysis for English and Korean and claim that Korean does not have a double access reading in a semantic sense, defending a pragmatic analysis for the double access effects in Korean. In section 2, I will explain why I am being skeptical about the claim that Japanese or Korean has a double access sentence and identify the true status of a so-called double access reading in Korean, thereby clearing out the confusions in Ogihara (1996) and (1999). In section3, I will turn to the double access effects arising with an indexical adverb ‘cikum’ (now) in Korean and sketch the movement based syntactic solutions suggested in the literature.