Abstract
In earlier work, we developed an composition in which predicates can be composed with arguments by operations other than Function Application, and it makes a difference which composition operation is employed. Here we take our approach further by examining two nonsaturating operations that combine property contents: Restrict, which composes a predicate with the property content of an indefinite; and Modify, which is involved in predicate modification. Nonsaturating operations that combine property contents are often formalized in terms of predicate intersection, which is commutative. Using Austronesian language Chamorro, we argue that Restrict and Modify are not ‘commutative’, but instead incorporate an asymmetry: they take one content to supply a domain that is narrowed further by combination with the other content. Syntactically, it is transparent which category’s content supplies the domain. But semantically, this information can be recovered only from the way in which the composition operation affects the contents that it composes, since—as we show—the same contents can be composed with distinct results.
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We are indebted to Manuel F. Borja, William I. Macaranas, Maria P. Mafnas, Maria T. Quinata, and Anicia Q. Tomokane for their judgments and commentary on the Chamorro examples. Thanks also to the numerous people who have helped us (acknowledged in Chung and Ladusaw 2004), and especially to Jürgen Bohnemeyer, Guglielmo Cinque, Hans-Martin Gärtner, Edward Keenan, Angelika Kratzer, Jim McCloskey, Louise McNally, Gillian Ramchand, Peter Svenonius, an anonymous reviewer, and audiences at AFLA, SALT, SULA, the CASTL Kick-Off Conference, Swarthmore, and the Universities of Chicago, Massachusetts (Amherst), and Pennsylvania.
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Chung, S., Ladusaw, W.A. Chamorro evidence for compositional asymmetry. Nat Lang Semantics 14, 325–357 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11050-007-9007-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11050-007-9007-x