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Classifiers and Determiner-Less Languages: the Case of Thai

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Classifiers and Determiner-Less Languages: the Case of Thai Classifiers and Determiner-less Languages: The Case of Thai by Nattaya Piriyawiboon A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Linguistics University of Toronto © Copyright by Nattaya Piriyawiboon 2010 Classifiers and Determiner-less Languages: The Case of Thai Nattaya Piriyawiboon Doctor of Philosophy Department of Linguistics University of Toronto 2010 Abstract This thesis provides a syntactic and semantic analysis of bare arguments and classifiers in Thai as well as accounting for its nominal word order. Adopting the Nominal Mapping Parameter (Chierchia 1998), it is argued that Thai nouns are names of kinds. Kinds are of type <s,e>, which are allowed to appear without overt determiners in argument position. For this reason, Thai nouns cannot directly combine with a quantifier without the help of a classifier. The study shows that Thai arguments behave like English bare arguments (bare plurals and mass nouns) in that they exhibit scopelessness and can be interpreted with different meanings such as weak indefinite, generic and kind interpretations. Unlike English bare arguments, the Thai counterparts may also have a definite interpretation. This is because Thai lacks an overt definite determiner. In addition, the thesis provides a unified analysis for the occurrence of Thai classifiers in different contexts. It is assumed that a classifier occurs in a quantified context to provide a portion of a kind (Krifka 1995, Chierchia 1998). The thesis further proposes that a classifier occurs in a non-quantified context where there is no overt numeral when the noun phrase is specific. A specific noun phrase includes those appearing with a demonstrative, the numeral ‘one’ or a modifier. As for the word order within the nominal domain, it is proposed that the noun, although merged at the bottom of the Specific Phrase underlyingly, always appears in the initial position to check an uninterpretable nominal feature in the Specific head. ii Acknowledgments In writing this thesis, I am indebted to so many people. First, I am grateful to my supervisor, Diane Massam, for guiding me through stages of my second generals paper and thesis. Diane is someone who always understands what I want to say and brings out the best of everything she takes part in. I am also thankful to Elizabeth Cowper, who taught me to think of all the possibilities in tackling certain questions. I always had light bulbs going on after discussions with Elizabeth. Simona Herdan is another person I am grateful to. She sat through hours and hours of teaching me Semantics and was so patient with my lack of semantic knowledge. I also thank Susana Bejar who, in spite of having so much on her plate with a new baby, took the time to thoroughly provide insightful comments as well as encouragement. Finally, I am thankful to my external examiner, Martina Wiltschko for her helpful comments and questions. Although not part of my thesis committee, I thank Gennaro Chierchia for allowing me an opportunity to discuss my thesis with him and illuminating me with his insightful discussion. I thank him for being such a great influence of this work. I also thank my MA thesis supervisor, Mohamed Guerssel, who always saw the best in me and who inspired me to become a linguist. Aside from my thesis committee, I am also grateful to Alana Johns, who is always enthusiastic to talk to me about any topic and is so supportive and helpful, Elan Dresher, who always leads illuminating discussions in the Analysis and Argumentation class and in our meetings, and Keren Rice, who always takes the time to help every student in all aspects and always gives me good advice about both academic and non-academic matters. I have also benefited from discussions with my colleagues, especially my dear friend Julia Su, who is always helpful to everyone and always comes up with a solution I never thought of, and Monica Irimia, who always gives a thorough explanation whenever I have a question. I also thank the members of the Syntax Project for their helpful comments and discussions, in particular Michela Ippolito, Sarah Clarke, Richard Compton, Daniel Hall, Kyumin Kim, Maria Kyriakaki, Marina Sherkina- Lieber, Catherine Macdonald, Kenji Oda and Eugenia Suh. I would like to also thank my friend Lidia Jarmasz for helping me with the editing of the thesis, Manami Hirayama for being such a good badminton mentor and a good friend, Elham Rohany Rahbar for consistently being a good friend, Mary Hsu for her perpetual help and advice and Bill Forrest for all his help during my iii time at the University of Toronto. I consider myself very fortunate to be part of a really warm and friendly academic community. The people at the Department of Linguistics at the University of Toronto, who are too numerous to name, have made me feel like I had a second home. Every single person, including the faculty, present students and alumni, will forever be in my fondest memories. There are also people in my non-academic life that I am grateful to because they have witnessed my life and are part of who I am today. Especially, I thank my parents, Worasit and Supranee Piriyawiboon, for their love and teaching and for always providing the best for me. I would be nothing without them. I also thank my mother, Suchada Kailey, who gave me the opportunity to come to Canada and whose love is endless. During my studies, I received financial support in the form of Ontario Graduate Scholarships, University of Toronto Fellowships, Dr. David Chu Scholarships in Asia Pacific Studies, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada grants to Prof. Diane Massam and SSHRC Institutional Grants from the Department of Linguistics. I am grateful to the donors of these funds. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgments ____________________________________________________________ iii Table of Contents______________________________________________________________v Abbreviations ________________________________________________________________vii Chapter 1 Introduction _________________________________________________________1 1 Topics of investigation _______________________________________________________5 2 Background of Thai syntax ___________________________________________________11 3 Scope and outline of the thesis ________________________________________________15 Chapter 2 Theoretical Background_______________________________________________18 1 English bare plurals ________________________________________________________18 2 The definition of kinds ______________________________________________________21 3 Deriving the interpretations of kinds ___________________________________________23 4 The Nominal Mapping Parameter _____________________________________________25 4.1 The parameter setting _________________________________________________________ 26 4.2 A competing approach: DP-analysis (Longobardi 1994) ______________________________ 34 4.3 Arguments against NMP_______________________________________________________ 36 Chapter 3 The Semantics of Thai Nominals________________________________________41 1 Interpretations of Thai bare arguments _________________________________________42 2 On the demonstratives and the numeral ‘one’ ____________________________________48 3 Derivation of other meanings from kinds _______________________________________51 3.1 Episodic context ___________________________________________________________________ 52 3.2 Generic context____________________________________________________________________ 53 4 The effects of kind reference__________________________________________________55 4.1 Number vagueness _________________________________________________________________ 55 4.2 Lack of a mass/count distinction in predicates ____________________________________________ 57 4.3 Inability to become a verb____________________________________________________________ 58 Chapter 4 The Semantics of Thai Classifiers _______________________________________61 1 Previous Analyses__________________________________________________________63 2 Chierchia (2009a)__________________________________________________________67 3 The contexts for classifiers in Thai_____________________________________________68 4 Analysis__________________________________________________________________72 5 Challenges to the proposed analysis ___________________________________________82 5.1 Abstract nouns ______________________________________________________________ 83 5.2 Optionality in N-(Cl)-Dem _____________________________________________________ 84 v 6 The classifier slot __________________________________________________________87 6.1 Mass vs. count classifiers ______________________________________________________ 87 6.2 Group classifier ‘puak’ ________________________________________________________ 89 Chapter 5 Deriving Word Order in Thai NPs_______________________________________93 1 Previous analyses __________________________________________________________94 2 Proposed structure of Thai NPs _______________________________________________96 2.1 Quantified noun phrases _______________________________________________________ 99 2.2 Discontinuous noun phrases ___________________________________________________ 100 2.3 NPs with overt specific elements _______________________________________________ 105 2.4 Specific modified NPs _______________________________________________________ 107 2.5 NP-ellipsis_________________________________________________________________ 108 2.6 Doubling of classifiers
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