ABSTRACT
The particle pun in Standard Malay is polyfunctional. Besides the simple additive (≈ too, also), scalar additive (≈ even), and final particle uses, it has another use that has been described as expressing a temporal meaning in the literature. This chapter offers formal analyses of these uses, with a primary focus on the last kind, namely, the so-called “event-sequence” pun. I show that this use is, in fact, more general and is not restricted to temporal relations between events. I argue that it is essentially a type of additive: “propositional additive.” Propositional additive differs from the ordinary “individual additive” in that the alternative propositions share a discourse-structural property (= properties of propositions) rather than properties concerning individuals. Specifically, they answer the same immediate Question Under Discussion (QUD). The temporal meaning is not encoded by the pun itself but arises pragmatically when the QUD is “What happened to X?”
