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Context restrictors, exhaustivity, and minimal sufficiency: the semantics of Mandarinjiu

摘要:

Mandarinjiu, which also functions as a conditional marker, exemplifies a broader cross-linguistic pattern whereby a single item gives rise to both minimal-sufficiency and exclusive readings in conditionals and simplex sentences. Among existing accounts of this duality, I argue that Mandarinjiuprovides compelling evidence for a modal-base analysis of minimal sufficiency, thereby supporting the conditional-based analysis of Englishjustproposed by Coppock & Lindahl (2014).On this view,jiuintroduces a necessity claim evaluated relative to a contextually supplied modal base, and the observed position-meaning correlations are derived through local exhaustification carried out by a covert exhaustivity operatorO, triggered by a focus feature onjiu’s associate.Building on Kratzer’s (1986)if-restrictor analysis and Haiman’s (1978) insights into the frame-setting functions of conditional clauses and topics, leftward associates—both clausal and non-clausal—are analyzed as context restrictors that update the modal base, yielding a non-exclusive minimal-sufficiency interpretation. This interpretation may surface as a sufficiency conditional, a relatively small-quantity reading, or a relative earliness reading. In contrast, rightward association triggers exhaustification over thejiu-clause itself, resulting in an exclusive interpretation. I further argue that certain scalar pragmatic effects, most notably emphatic readings with extreme predicates and “lowness”-type implications under non-scalar focus, motivate the incorporation of second-order (recursive) exhaustification into the analysis. Overall, this proposal offers a unified semantics forjiuand contributes to a broader cross-linguistic understanding of how modal bases may be manipulated to derive multiple minimal sufficiency readings from exclusive operators.