The Projection of Not-at-issue Meaning via Modal Support: The Meaning and Use of the Japanese Counter-Expectational Adverbs

This paper discusses the phenomenon of what I call the “projection of non-at issue meaning via modal support” shown in the Japanese counterexpectational intensifier yoppodo and the counter expectational scale-reversal adverb kaette, and considers the variation of projective content from a new perspective. I show that, unlike the typical conventional implicatures (CIs) like appositives and expressives (e.g., Potts 2005), kaette and yoppodo can project out of the complement of a belief predicate only if there is a modal in the main clause. I argue that yoppodo and kaette belong to a new class of projective content that requires consistency between an at-issue meaning and a CI meaning in terms of a judge. This paper provides a new perspective for the typology of projective content.