Free Choice Relatives in Telugu

Abstract

In English (and Hindi, with JO-BHII) an -EVER free relative (FR) can have one of three interpretations – ignorance, indifference, and quantificational. In Telugu, each of them is expressed through a separate construction, – the ignorance reading via a disjunctive particle and 'but' correlative, the indifference reading via a conditional correlative, and the quantificational reading via a concessive conditional free relative. Whereas theoretical analyses have tried to unify the various readings in English, or subsume one under the other, the theoretical challenge in Telugu is to explain how and why each reading is associated with a different structure and derive the semantic mechanism based on the morphosyntax of the structure that it is associated with, besides explaining how the modal implications and quantificational force come about in each of these non-modal, non-quantifier contexts. In this paper, we attempt to derive each of the readings building on the morphosyntax of the constructions involved – a Hamblin interrogative composing with a conditional modal semantics for the indifference reading, a trio of possibilities based on the semantics of the morphemes involved in the ignorance construction, and the quantificational reading as dependent definites licensed by a quantificational operator ranging over situation variables.