Floating Quantifiers in English and Their Semantic Composition
Hideharu Tanaka
May 2023
 

This paper reconsiders the nature of floating quantifiers (FQ) in English and proposes a strictly compositional semantic approach to their distribution. The new approach builds on Fitzpatrick's (2006) sketch of a "crossing" analysis, under which the semantic composition of a FQ is made possible by moving a co-indexed DP over the FQ. This idea is formally implemented by making a minor revision to Heim and Kratzer's (1998) Predicate Abstraction, and the revision allows the rule to apply to whatever nodes exist within a movement path. It is shown that the crossing analysis developed in this paper overcomes some empirical challenges to the stranding analysis (Sportiche 1988; Bošković 2004) and modifier analysis (Bobaljik 1995; Brisson 1998).
Format: [ pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/006779
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in: To appear in the Proceedings of WCCFL 40
keywords: stranding, modifier, crossing, null pronoun, predicate abstraction, movement, semantics, syntax
previous versions: v1 [August 2022]
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