Discourse-Initial Too and Epistemic ModalitySumiyo Nishiguchi

Tokyo University of Science

Conjunctive adverb too (1)Kyoto is nice. Nara is nice, too• meaning of also • felicitous only when

it follows another sentence

• Kyoto is the antecedent for Nara

Discourse-initial too (2)It’s nice here, too.• has not been

discussed so far• appears discourse-

initially • uttered unexpectedly

without sounding remotely peculiar

• no antecedent • no contrastive focus

Japanese discourse-initial mo ``too/also” (3)Yo-mo fuke-ta. night-also grow-PAST Mo neru-to shi-yo. already sleep-COMP do-let’s “It’s late, indeed. It’s time

to go to bed.” • There is no antecedent for

yo “night”• Yo “night” is not

particularly contrasted with anything else

Japanese additive particle mo “too/also”(4) #(Kyoto-wa i-shi,) Kyoto-TOP good-and Nara-mo ii. Nara-also good “Kyoto is good and so

is Nara.”• Nara is contrasted with

its antecedent Kyoto• Regular mo-sentences

are felicitous only when they follow another sentence

Proposal: discourse-initial too is • an epistemic necessity modal (epistemic must)• an emphatic marker, similar to indeed or really.• a sentential modal that associates with a whole

proposition. (5)[| too |] = lp<s, t>. lw.w’.[wRw’ -> p(w’) = 1]

(R: epistemic accessibility relation, w: possible world)• In all the worlds epistemically accessible from the actual world to the speaker, the proposition to which too is attached is true (Kratzer 1981).

• Speaker believes that the proposition holds true. • The interpretation of (2) is true, if and only if the speaker

believes that the location s/he is in is nice.Romero and Han (2004)• Really and indeed are epistemic adverbs which express the

speaker’s evaluations. (6) Nara is really good.• (6) is true if Nara is good in any of the speaker’s belief

world.Given such a meaning, the sentential modal too should take higher scope over the proposition

The syntactic structure of the expletive construction • Too c-commands PredP in base position. • Nice and here are assumed to be raised higher so that too is

spelled out in the lower position compared to them.

ELSJ Spring Forum 2011Shizuoka UniversityApril 24, 2011

Numata (1986) attenuationTeramura (1984) admiration• No discussion about discourse-initial behavior

of mo

Q: Why do discourse-initial too and mo “too” not require their antecedents?

TP It T’ T MODALP is Modal PredP too PredP AdvP <is> AP here

nice

Conclusion: This paper presented an analysis of the novel use of too from semantic and syntactic perspectives