In this section, I present a use that is specific to the bound additive–kAAn, and that has been previously proposed to give rise to aremind-mepresupposition (Sauerland and Yatsushiro, 2017).
For reasons that will become clear below, I refer to this use asrecurring-issueinstead.
On the recurring issue use, the bound additive–kAAnis optional, and always attaches to a tensed verb. Intuitively, its presence signals that the issue encoded in the question has been raised previously. In Finnish, this recurring-issue presupposition may also be contributed by the aspec-tual particletaas‘again’, or by a combination oftaasand–kAAn (cf. Sauerland and Yatsushiro, 2017). The example shown in (208) shows both a wellformed example with–kAAn(208a), well-formed examples with–kinandmyösthat do not illustrate the recurring-issue use, but the basic and/or the polar use (208b-c), and an ungrammatical version with the unboundmyöskään(208c).
(208) Recurring-issue:–kAAnvs.–kin,myös(kään) a. Mi-ssä
where-INE
sinä you.NOM
(taas) (again)
kävi-t-(kään)?
visit-PAST.3SG-ADD
‘Where did you visit again?’ (recurring-issue) b. Mi-ssä
where-INE
sinä you.NOM
kävi-t-kin?
(again)
‘Where did you visit, too?’ (basic) or ‘Where did you visit (although you were expected not to)?’ (polar)
c. Mi-ssä where-INE
sinä you.NOM
myös
ADD
kävi-t?
visit-PAST.3SG
‘Where did you visit, too?’ (basic)
4.5. Recurring-issue use
d. *Mi-ssä where-INE
sinä you.NOM
myöskään
ADD
kävi-t?
visit-PAST.3SG
Recurring-issue presuppositions are generally restricted towh-questions in Finnish. Perhaps due to the presence of awh-phrase, the host of the bound additive is not as prominent on the recurring-issue use as it is on the basic use. In (208a), I again use dashed underlining to indicate that the host is prosodically less prominent than what one would expect from the associate of an additive. As was proposed in section 4.2.2, the deaccenting of the host in this and other contexts could be related to the phenomenon of second occurrence focus.17
If the tensed verb is the associate of the additive on its recurring-issue use, the focus semantic value of the prejacent should involve two alternative-inducing expressions: thewh-phrase, and the F-marked verb. The same came up in the context ofwh-concessives (section 4.4.2). However, in contrast towh-concessives, recurring-issue questions are indeed interpreted as questions, and the presence of–kAAnis not required for the recurring-issue interpretation to arise. Therefore, while the focus semantic value of the prejacent might be the same in the two uses, the seman-tics of the additive is not. Nevertheless, it is interesting to consider what kind of alternatives the bound additive is working with in recurring-issue questions.
As mentioned above, recurring-issue presuppositions have been previously dubbed remind-me presuppositions (Sauerland and Yatsushiro, 2017). The reason why I opt for the term recurring-issue is that the presupposition does not seem to require – as suggested by the term ‘remind-me’
– that the speaker ever knew the answer to the question. Moreover, this answer is not even re-quired to have been given previously, contrary to what Sauerland and Yatsushiro (2017) suggest.
This point can be illustrated with the following example.
(209) Recurring-issue presuppositions are felicitous when the answer has not been given Context: A, B, and C are playing a card game where knowing how many cards each player has is advantageous, but no one is required to reveal the number of cards they are holding.
A asks B how many cards they have. C hears the question, but does not register whether B answers or not. In reality, B does not answer. C asks:
C: Monta-ko how.many-Q
kortti-a card-PAR
sinu-lla you-ADE
ol-i-kaan, be-PAST.3SG-ADD
B?
B
‘How many cards do you have again, B?’
In (209), B never answers A’s question; nevertheless, C’s question is felicitous. What is required is that the issue raised in C’s question was raised previously. This does not mean that the same
17As was mentioned in section 2.1.3, second occurrence focus (in the literal sense of the word) has been shown to have perceivable acoustic correlates in English (Jaeger, 2004; Beaver et al., 2007). To determine whether the less-prominent verbal hosts of additives are also perceivably F-marked, a proper perception experiment should be con-ducted. At this point, I simply assume that this is the case, and that verbal hosts are always the associate of the bound additive.
question had to be asked explicitly: for example, in (210), A’s remark raises the relevant issue in disjunctive form, and B’s recurring-issue–kAAnis felicitous.
(210) Recurring-issue presuppositions are felicitous when the issue has been raised
Context: A and B are at a big party. A says: "Look at this party. I’ve met so many new people tonight that I can’t remember half of their names. I do remember that the guy standing by the door is called Max. He is from Alabama or Arizona. I forget which. And that’s Tom, I think at least... or maybe Tony..."
B: Hetkinen, moment.NOM
mi-stä where-ELA
Max Max.NOM
ol-i-kaan
be-PAST.3SG-ADD
kotoisin?
from Saata-n
may-PRES.1SG
ol-la be-INF
jo already
tavan-nut meet-PASTPART
häne-t he-ACC
aiemmin...
before
‘Wait, where is Max from again? I might have met him before...’
Based on the data shown above, it appears that the recurring-issue involves an antecedent that is not a proposition, but e.g. a set of propositions (i.e. a question). Such antecedents cannot be found within the common ground: in our model of the discourse context (see section 2.2.1), the common ground is a set of propositions, not a set of sets of propositions. If we assume that the antecedent is a question, the unavailability of the recurring-issue use with unbound additives may again be related to their inability to refer back to antecedents that are not in the common ground. However, now it is the inability of–kinto convey a recurring-issue presupposition that is surprising. There must be some other property of–kAAnand–kinthat separates them, and results in the availability of recurring-issue use only with the former. Moreover, if the assumption is that the host of the bound additive is also always its associate, we expect both thewh-phrase and the F-marked verb to play a role in the determination of the focus semantic value of the the prejacent, and hence the form of the antecedent, as in thewh-concessive use. However, in contrast to wh-concessives, the use of–kAAn in recurring-issue questions is optional, and does not appear to affect the truth-conditional semantics of the question. Moreover, whilewh-concessives can be built using both–kinand–kAAn, the recurring-issue use is only possible with–kAAn. Therefore, the analysis of recurring-issue requires an analysis of its own.
To conclude, the recurring-issue use is only available with the bound additive–kAAn, which necessarily attaches to a tensed verb within awh-question. Notably, the felicity of a recurring-issue question does not require a previous answer to the question. Instead, the same question or issue has to have been raised previously. It therefore appears that the recurring-issue use of bound additives makes reference to an antecedent that is itself an issue (or question).