Quantification (Research Surveys in Linguistics)
Cambridge University Press, 12/2/2010
EAN 9780521887960, ISBN10: 0521887968
Hardcover, 264 pages, 22.8 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm
Language: English
Quantification forms a significant aspect of cross-linguistic research into both sentence structure and meaning. This book surveys research in quantification starting with the foundational work in the 1970s. It paints a vivid picture of generalized quantifiers and Boolean semantics. It explains how the discovery of diverse scope behaviour in the 1990s transformed the view of quantification, and how the study of the internal composition of quantifiers has become central in recent years. It presents different approaches to the same problems, and links modern logic and formal semantics to advances in generative syntax. A unique feature of the book is that it systematically brings cross-linguistic data to bear on the theoretical issues, covering French, German, Dutch, Hungarian, Russian, Japanese, Telugu (Dravidian), and Shupamem (Grassfield Bantu) and points to formal semantic literature involving quantification in around thirty languages.
1. What this book is about and how to use it
2. Generalized quantifiers and their elements
operators and their scopes
3. Generalized quantifiers in non-nominal domains
4. Some empirically significant properties of quantifiers and determiners
5. Potential challenges for generalized quantifiers
6. Scope is not uniform and not a primitive
7. Existential scope versus distributive scope
8. Distributivity and scope
9. Bare numeral indefinites
10. Modified numerals
11. Clause-internal scopal diversity
12. Towards a compositional semantics of quantifier words.
'Extraordinary scholarship. A superb technical exposition, and an invaluable resource on the nature of quantification cross-linguistically.' Christopher Potts, Stanford University