Presuppositional Compositionality with Japanese Mo

Chierchia (2004) argues that scalar implicature computation is part of function compositional process of a sentence interpretation. In this talk I will discuss a set of data from Japanese which indirectly support this hypothesis. The data involve a numeral quantifier (NQ) and mo. An NQ is a combination of a numeral and a classifier, and mo is a presuppositional element similar to English even. The data show there to be strict correlations between syntactic structure and presuppositional meaning. I argue that these correlations can only be explained satisfactorily if presupposition is locally computed during semantic interpretation via function composition. The relevant set of data is shown in (1)-(3), where boldfacing shows focus stress and square brackets indicate syntactic constituents. In (1) NQ-mo is in an adverbial position modifying a VP. In (2) mo is attached to a nominal constituent of the form [NQ-no NP]. In (3) NQ-mo is embedded in a DP as [[NQ-mo]-no NP] DP. The different interpretations corresponding to the different syntactic structures in positive and negative contexts are indicated on the right in parentheses. (1) NQ-mo a. gakusei-ga [20-nin-mo shiken-ni gookaku shita]. student-NOM 20-CL-MO exam-in pass did 'As many as 20 students passed the exam. (high) b. gakusei-ga [20-nin-mo shiken-ni gookaku shinakatta]. student-NOM 20-CL-MO exam-in pass didn't 'As many as 20 students didn't pass the exam.' (high) 'Not even 20 students passed the exam.' (low) (2) [NQ-no NP]-mo a. #[20-nin-no gakusei]-mo shiken-ni gookaku shita. 20-CL-GEN student-MO exam-in pass did #'As many as 20 students passed the exam. (#high) b. [20-nin-no gakusei]-mo shiken-ni gookaku shinakatta. 20-CL-GEN student-MO exam-in pass didn't #'As many as 20 students didn't pass the exam.' (#high) 'Not even 20 students passed the exam.' (low) (3) Embedded NQ-mo a. [[20-nin-mo]-no gakusei]-ga shiken-ni gookaku shita. 20-CL-MO-GEN student-NOM exam-in pass did 'As many as 20 students passed the exam. (high) b. [[20-nin-mo]-no gakusei]-ga shiken-ni gookaku shinakatta. 20-CL-MO-GEN student-NOM exam-in pass didn't 'As many as 20 students didn't pass the exam.' (high) #'Not even 20 students passed the exam.' (#low) The respective interpretations can be described as follows: With adverbial NQ-mo in (1), the positive sentence in (1a) yields an 'as many as n' reading of the numeral. I dub this the 'high reading'. (The number expressed is regarded as higher than expected by the speaker.) On the other hand, the negative sentence in (1b) is ambiguous between the high reading and the 'low reading'. (The number expressed …