NUMERAL INDETERMINATE PHRASES AND THEIR EXISTENTIAL QUANTIFICATION BY <i>MO</i> IN JAPANESE

要旨

The quantificational suffix mo in Japanese has long been assumed to induce universal interpretation. However, there is a rare counterexample. The intuitive interpretation of na’n-satu-mo ‘what-CLvolume-MO’ is ‘a large number of volumes,’ which is existential. This study argues that in cases like this, the quantificational suffix mo is indeed an existential suffix, and that therefore the grammar has two types of quantificational suffix mo, namely universal mo and existential mo.

主題