This dissertation is about additivity. Additives belong to the larger class of focus-sensitive expres-sions (König, 1991), and can be generally described as signals of pre-established information in the discourse context. For example, when (1) is pronounced with main stress on the subjectMary (signaled with underlining), it is typically used felicitously in a context where it has been previ-ously established or it is somehow otherwise evident and relevant that someone else – say, John – is happy.
(1) Mary is happy, too
As semantic entities, additives impose specific requirements on the contexts in which they may be used. This requirement – the semantic contribution associated with an additive – is stan-dardly classified as a presupposition (Karttunen and Karttunen, 1976; Karttunen and Peters, 1979;
Kripke, 1990/2009; Heim, 1990, 1992).
In this dissertation, I approach the domain of additivity through a case study on Finnish (Finno-Ugric). In Finnish, additivity can be expressed with the unbound expressionsmyösand myöskäänas well as the bound clitics–kinand–kAAn, as shown in (2) and (3).
(2) Unbound additivesmyösandmyöskään a. Myös
ADD
Mari Mari.NOM
o-n
be-PRES.3SG
iloinen happy.NOM
‘Mari is happy, too’
1.1. Research questions
b. Myöskään
ADD
Mari Mari.NOM
e-i
NEG-3SG
ole be.CONN
iloinen happy.NOM
‘Mari is not happy, either’
(3) Bound additives–kinand–kAAn a. Mari-kin
Mari.NOM-ADD
o-n
be-PRES.3SG
iloinen happy.NOM
‘Mari is happy, too’
b. Mari-kaan Mari.NOM-ADD
e-i
NEG-3SG
ole be.CONN
iloinen happy.NOM
‘Mari is not happy, either’
The a- and b-sentences of (2) and (3) respectively convey the same meaning; informally, the pre-supposition can be paraphrased as the requirement that someone else besides Mari is happy (a) or that someone else besides Mari is not happy (b). However, it is not always the case that unbound and bound additives may be used in exactly the same contexts, with no difference in meaning. One the one hand, this is because bound additives are sometimes additionally inter-preted asscalar, i.e. as involving a comparison in terms of likelihood (cf. evenin English; Kart-tunen and Peters, 1979). On the other hand, bound additives simply have a wider distribution than unbound additives. One of the main goals of this dissertation is to explain why this is the case.
The distribution of the bound and unbound additives that I cover in this dissertation is briefly presented below. On a terminological note, when talking about specific parts of the distribution of additives, I refer to their differentuses. Out of the eight uses listed below, only the basic use is common to both unbound and bound additives in Finnish. All other uses are only available with bound additives.
1. Basic use: Both bound and unbound additives appear in sentences where they express plain vanilla additivity involving lexical alternatives (cf.also,tooandeitherin English) 2. Polar use: Bound additives appear in sentences where the relevant alternative is the polar
opposite of their prejacent, and where that alternative corresponds to a belief or wish of the speaker
3. Reactive use: Bound additives appear in reactive replies, where the relevant alternative is non-distinct from the prejacent, and corresponds to a public discourse commitment of another discourse participant
4. Concessive uses: Bound additives appear in two types of concessive structures, of which one is restricted to concessive subordinate clauses and can be reduced to either the reactive or the polar use, and the other involves existential closure
5. Recurring-issue use: Bound additives appear in recurring-issue questions where the rele-vant alternative is the non-distinct from the prejacent (itself a question), and can be found in the stack of QUDs (Question Under Discussion) associated with the conversation 6. Double contrast use: Bound additives appear attached to contrastive topics and make
ref-erence to an alternative that differs not only in terms of the contrastive topic, but also in terms of a focus
7. Multiple-whuse: Bound additives appear in interrogative, relative, and declarative multi-plewh-structures, and lead to existential closure
8. Quantifier use: Bound additives appear as parts of quantifiers, and lead to either existential or universal closure
Given their wide distribution, it is unsurprising that the bound additives–kinand–kAAnappear very frequently in spoken and written Finnish. However, surprisingly little formal research has been conducted in order to describe and explain their behaviour and distribution. The main focus of most work is on the basic use (Karttunen and Karttunen, 1976; Vilkuna, 1984; Vilppula, 1984), and there is some work on the double contrast use (Vilkuna, 1984). For the most part, however, the distribution of bound and unbound additives in Finnish has not been accounted for.
The goal of this dissertation is to fill this void by proposing a modern and comprehensive analysis of additivity in Finnish. By modern, I refer to the framework of Alternative Semantics (Rooth, 1985, 1992), which is now standardly used in the study of focus-sensitive expressions. By comprehensive, I refer to the empirical coverage that is aimed: in particular, the proposed anal-ysis should cover the different uses of additives identified above. Thus, with respect to Finnish, the research questions addressed in this dissertation are:
(4) Research questions for Finnish
How should the syntax and semantics of unbound and bound additivity in Finnish be anal-ysed?
a. What distinguishes unbound and bound additives?
b. What distinguishes–kinfrom–kAAnon the one hand, and andmyösfrommyöskäänon the other?
c. What distinguishes the different uses of additives in Finnish?
The analysis of additivity in Finnish will then serve as a new window into long-standing issues in the investigation of additivity in general: