Speaker: Prarthanaa Bharadwaj (Goethe University, Frankfurt)
Title: Polyfunctionality of the Particles -oo and -uu: The Indeterminate sytem in Kannada
Time: Wednesday, September 30, 1-2pm
Location: 32-D461
Zoom link: https://mit.zoom.us/j/92053685079
Abstract:
In his seminal typology, Haspelmath (1997) observed that indefinite pronouns in many languages are built from interrogatives combined with focus-sensitive particles, and that the same building blocks yield negative polarity items (NPIs) and free choice items (FCIs). Work on such indeterminate systems has shown that they also extend to question formation (Kuroda, 1965; Kratzer & Shimoyama, 2002; Cable, 2010) and relative clauses (Slade, 2011; Dayal, 1997; Caponigro, 2003; Balusu, 2021). In this talk, I examine indeterminates in Kannada (Dravidian) from the perspective of the particles that license them. I present the paradigm of the disjunctive particle -oo and the inclusive particle -uu across coordination, indefinites, questions, inclusive focus, and relative clauses, and show that both the presence of a wh-word and the particle’s height of attachment determine its interpretation: -oo can occupy the clause-typing position, where it forms questions, whereas -uu never can. I then assess how far two existing accounts—Uegaki’s (2018) unified semantics of the Japanese Q-particle ka and Balusu’s (2022) analysis of Dravidian NPIs/FCIs as unconditionals can jointly account for the Kannada paradigm.