Varieties of wh-exclamatives: A view from the negative wh-expressives in Japanese

Wh-exclamatives are usually considered degree constructions (e.g., Zanuttini & Portner 2003, Castroviejo 2008, Rett 2008). However, Japanese possesses what I call negative wh-expressives, which unrelated to degree. argue that unlike typical wh-exclamatives, wh-expressive sentences express a speaker’s attitude, and their compositional system is similar of an interrogative sentence except for the speech act operator. That is, occurs with operator, takes set propositions Q (i) presupposes there unique proposition p in salient, (ii) conventionally implies unexpected speaker has attitude toward it. In this paper, we also look at cases wh expression embedded complement omo-tteiru ‘think’ nani ‘what’ acts as adjunct, show these can be explained by core component proposed mechanism. This paper shows wh-related exclamatives have both scalar non-scalar types, considers new typology exclamatives.