Alternating conj/disjunctions: the case of Japanese "-toka" and "-tari"

Abstract

This paper investigates the interpretation of Japanese -toka and -tari, two nonexhaustive
particles that receive conjunctive interpretations in upward-entailing
environments, but disjunctive interpretations in downward-entailing and question contexts.
We analyze -toka and -tari as items that introduce unstructured sets of alternatives in a
Hamblin-style alternative semantics (Hamblin, 1973; Kratzer and Shimoyama, 2002), and
derive their conjunctive and disjunctive readings via an interaction between these sets and the
semantics of the environment containing them.
Keywords: -toka, -tari, Japanese, alternative semantics, conjunction, disjunction