Evidentiality and determination

Jacques Jayez (1) , Lucia M. Tovena (2)

1 ICAR - Interactions, Corpus, Apprentissages, Représentations
2 LLF UMR7110 - Laboratoire de Linguistique Formelle

This paper investigates the semantic properties of the French determiner quelque. It is shown that quelque conveys inferential evidentiality, that is, it selects interpretations in which the speaker infers the proposition conveyed by the sentence that hosts the determiner. This accounts for several other properties, for instance the fact that quelque is anti-specific and does not combine freely with negation. A notable consequence of the analysis is that the free choice and positive polarity behaviour of quelque are reduced to its basic semantics.

Mots clés: C-ACTI

Domaines: Linguistique

Jacques Jayez, Lucia M. Tovena. Evidentiality and determination. 12th Sinn & Bedeutung, 2007, Oslo, Norway. ⟨halshs-00751180⟩