The presupposition of exclamatives at the syntax-semantics interface: Evidence from German and Japanese

German wh-exclamatives allow verb-last (VL) word order as well as verb-second (V2) word order when they contain degree expressions. Japanese koto-exclamatives are ill-formed when their predicates are not gradable. The goal of this paper is to show that these properties of German exclamatives and Japanese exclamatives can be explained when we analyze the degree components of exclamative clauses as not presupposed. In order to implement this idea, I adopt Zanuttini & Portner’s (2003) proposal that the presupposition trigger of exclamatives is a factivity-operator (FACT-Op) at the left periphery of exclamative clauses. The conclusion of this paper supports Zanuttini & Portner’s (2003) primary intention that the presupposition of exclamatives can be captured (not only at the semantic level but also) at the syntactic level.