Property-type Objects and Modal Embedding ∗

Verbs in West Greenlandic require a special piece of morphology, the antipassive, in order to take narrow-scope indefinite objects. Opaque objects of intensional verbs require the same treatment. This paper develops a semantics for the antipassive morpheme in West Greenlandic that shifts the verb’s object position to a property-type, providing for the object’s narrow scope, while introducing modal embedding. The modal embedding provides for the interpretation of opaque objects of inten-sional verbs, in a way syntactically constructing the intensional construction. The modal embedding of property-type object constructions is visible not just in West Greenlandic antipassives but also in Hindi-Urdu and even English, suggesting a generalized modalization in the combination of verb with property-type object. 1 Narrow scope indefinite objects Many languages mark a distinction between indefinite objects which must take narrow scope with respect to operators such as negation, modals and verbs with intensional object positions, and those which may take wide scope with respect to such operators