Delimiters in Singapore English

In Colloquial Singapore English (henceforth SgE), as in other varieties of English, the words 'only' and 'just' function as “delimiting” operators, identifying the constituent they have scope over as an entity or event that is unique or exclusive within a set. They also combine to yield the complex delimiters 'just only' and 'only just'. In this paper, we raise some questions about the puzzling facts of distribution, directionality of scope, and the non-adjacency effects of scope of these simple and complex delimiters, to which we do not see straightforward solutions.

In SgE, the expressions 'only' and 'just' can occur before the subject as in (1), with scope over either the entire clause or just the subject:

(1) Only/Just [[John] give Bill a book]]

In pre-verbal position, 'just' can have scope over either the entire VP or one of the daughters of the VP even when non-adjacent to it. The same is true of 'only':

(2) [John] only/just [[give] [Bill] [a book] [at the theatre]].

'Just' and 'only' can also occur between any two daughters of the VP, with scope over the immediately following constituent. Thus, both 'only' and 'just', when sisters of S and VP, can have scope over constituents that are not adjacent to them.

In (2), 'only', unlike 'just', can have scope over the subject as well. This applies to all positions that 'only occurs in: it has a choice in scope between the immediately following and immediately preceding constituent. It can also occur at the end of a clause, with scope over the entire clause, or any of its daughters, including the subject.

'Just' has the additional temporal function of locating an event at a point immediately preceding an anchor point in time. With this meaning, 'just' can only occur before the SUBJ or before the verb, and not anywhere else. It again has scope over the immediately following constituent. To distinguish the two functions of 'just', we will refer to the delimiting 'just' as 'just-D', and the temporal 'just' as 'just-T'.

To go on to the complex delimiters, the form 'just only' has the same syntactic distribution as 'only' (including the clause-final position), with the meaning of emphasized delimitation. Clause-initially and -finally, and pre- and post-verbally, 'just only' is ambiguous, the second meaning being identical to that of 'just-T'.

The other complex form, 'only just', can occur clause-initially or -finally, and pre- and post-verbally, but not anywhere else (say, between two dependents of the verb). In all positions, it unambiguously has the same meaning as 'just-T'. Thus, while 'just only' can be either delimiting or temporal, 'only just' can only be temporal. This asymmetry, as far as we can see, calls for a stipulation on 'only just', restricting its meaning to the temporal.

Arguably, the asymmetry between 'only' and 'just-D' in both distribution and directionality of scope can be explained if we assume that 'only' is aligned to the edge of its host, which must be a predicate, its dependent, or its projection. 'Just' is also aligned to the edge of its host, with the additional specification of the LEFT edge, yielding the rightward scope for 'just'. For 'only', the absence of specification leaves open the choice between leftward and rightward scope, and yields all the ambiguity effects that are unique to 'only', not shared by 'just'.

Next, the non-adjacency effects of the scope follow from specifying the sister of the delimiter as the DOMAIN of scope, and a constituent within the domain as the LOCUS of the scope. The absence of adjacency effects of 'just-T', in contrast to 'just-D', follow from its semantic function, that of locating an event at a point in time, rather than identifying a unique entity.

One curious factor pertaining to direction and non-adjacency effects is the following asymmetry. When the delimiter is to the right of an S or a VP, the locus of scope is within the domain of scope, as mentioned earlier, yielding non-adjacency effects. When the delimiter is to the left of an S, however, the locus and domain of scope must coincide: the internal structure of the S is opaque to the delimiter. We have no explanation for this asymmetry short of a stipulation.

Exactly like 'just-T', the complex expressions with a temporal meaning, 'just-T only' and 'only just-T', align to the left of the host. But in addition, they can also occur to the right of the host, suggesting that while they share the semantics of 'just-T', their directionality of scope is that of 'only'. This effect would follow if we assume that in the complex forms, 'just' is the semantic head, providing the semantic content, while 'only' is the syntactic head, determining distribution and directionality of scope. The assumption that 'just' is the semantic head correctly predicts that 'just-T only' and 'only just-T' will not exhibit non-adjacency effects, unlike 'just-D only'.

Finally, we must note that the patterns dealt with so far involve canonical declarative sentences, and do not include those with one or more topics. For the pattern of interaction between delimiters and adjuncts, consider (3):

In (3a), 'only' may have scope over either the SUBJ 'Jo', or over the entire event. In contrast, in (3b), 'only' has scope over the adjunct 'yesterday', but not over the event. We find a similar absence of non-adjacency effects in (4):

In (4a), 'only' has scope over adjacent constituents, 'yesterday' and 'Jo'. In (4b), 'only' has scope over 'yesterday'. No other interpretation is available to (4a) and (4b). Curiously, the presence of an adjunct blocks all non-adjacency effects of the delimiters.

Turning now to non-adjunct topics, consider (5):

In each of the sentences in (5), scope of the delimiter is again restricted to the smallest phrasal constituent adjacent to it. No other interpretation is available in these sentences. The presence of a non-adjunct topic, like that of an adjunct, appears to block the non-adjacency effects of the delimiter.