Capturing Modal Base Polarity with Mandarin wh-indefinites
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Mandarin wh-words occur as polarity-sensitive indefinites, which are licensed by epistemic expressions and negation, but not by deontic modals or other downward entailing operators. Previous analyses based on scalar strength reversal do not have an explicit mechanism for accounting for subtle distributional differences between different types of non-veridical environments. We propose Mandarin wh-indefinites have an epistemic uncertainty presupposition that contradicts the semantics of an assert operator (Alonso-Ovalle and Men´endez-Benito, 2011), unless intervened by non-veridical operators. By invoking Hacquard’s (2010), we explain general licensing by epistemic, and not deontic, modals as a requirement that event arguments for presuppositions of wh-indefinites be interpretable only above aspectual markers, consequently compatible with semantic scope below epistemic operators but above deontic operators.