Belgian Journal of Linguistics - Volume 19, Issue 1, 2005

Spanish, like many other languages (e.g. Hindi), exhibits differential object marking (DOM). It is well-known that DOM seems to be sensitive to the animacy and/or specificity of the direct object (Bossong 1985, Aissen 2003). It is argued here that the Spanish prepositional accusative, or a-marking, is a realization of the features [+accusative] and [+animate] within a nominal projection containing a determiner (D). Nominal projections lacking D are property-denoting and are not a-marked. I show that there is a direct map between the presence or absence of a-marking and the semantic type of the (animate) direct object nominal.

Drawing on Strawson’s (1971) definition of the subject as performing the function of identifying the object of the speaker’s assertion and of the predicate as applying to this object without having to identify it, this article argues that being a predicate and being (part of) the focus are two ways of talking about one and the same thing, namely assertion, and not identification or presupposition. Assuming that syntax and semantics are isomorphic, the most far-reaching consequence of this view and the central claim that I make is that there are no existential bare plural subjects. What is generally and a priori taken to be an existential bare plural subject is a (wh-moved) predicate nominal. The genuine external argument in sentences with existential bare plurals in what appears to be the subject position is in fact the Davidsonian event argument. Consequently, the Extended Projection Principle (EPP) should be defined as a requirement on predication. The syntax-semantics isomorphism is emphasized as part of an attempt to show that syntactically, generic and existential bare plurals differ with respect to the D-feature: while generic bare plurals are DPs with a morphologically null D, existential bare plurals, like bare singulars, are NPs altogether lacking a D-projection.

In this paper I focus on the semantics and distribution of Dutch bare plurals and faded partitives. It has been claimed in the literature that both types of noun phrases are indefinite, because they can occur in existential sentences. I discuss the semantic differences between faded partitives and bare plurals. It will be argued that bare plurals are ambiguous: they can take kind-referring or non-kind-referring (indefinite) interpretations, while faded partitives always take kind-referring readings. Our analysis makes it possible to handle subject-object asymmetries in the distribution of both types of noun phrases.

In this article, we discuss three different kinds of quantificational variability effects, namely quantificational variability readings in adverbially quantified sentences with (a) singular indefinites, (b) bare plurals, and (c) non kind-denoting plural definites. We investigate the three different strategies that are needed to derive the different kinds of quantificational variability effects. It is argued that all cases have the same quantificational domain, i.e. they all involve quantification over eventualities. We also show that the availability of quantificational variability effects in sentences with singular indefinites and plural definites is restricted by a constraint that we call the tense agreement constraint. Interestingly, there is no such restriction for sentences with bare plurals. This difference is due to the fact that singular indefinites and plural definites interact with the denotations of Q-adverbs in another way than bare plurals: while the former can be interpreted directly in the restriction of a Q-adverb, the latter need to be type-shifted in order to be interpretable in this position. This ‘indirect interpretation’ of bare plurals is assumed to be responsible for their resistance to the tense agreement constraint. This in turn is the reason why they induce quantificational variability effects in a wider range of cases than their singular indefinite or plural definite counterparts.

The present article argues that the idea of morphology-driven syntax carries over to first-language acquisition. Morphology encodes properties of functional categories, i.e. particular features and feature values that must be set according to the target (adult) language during the acquisition process. In agreement with previous findings concerning the acquisition of functional categories in the verbal domain, we discuss here some cross-linguistic data with respect to the nominal functional domain. In this respect, specificity can be said to develop stepwise, as the result of the valuation of the /number/ before the /person/ feature of noun phrases, which finds its reflection in the emergence of indefinite articles before definite articles.

We show how evidential relevance relations between restrictor predicates N and attribute predicates induce proportion quantifier interpretations of indefinite Det N. A paradigmsetting role is played by ‘Protagorean’ determiners, many and few, which intuitively designate large and small quantities, but equally express positive and negative relevance. The thesis is explicated and demonstrated within a Decision-Theoretic Semantics (Merin 1999a) and extends Mostowski's (1957) Generalized Quantifier [GQ] framework. Some puzzles about monotonicity of natural language GQs are solved, and several theses about such GQs are advanced and verified.

In this paper, I present an analysis of the French determiner plusieurs (‘several’). I show that one can account for its two opposite properties, as described in Bacha (1997) and Gondret (1976), namely the fact that (i) plusieurs cannot refer to large quantities and (ii) it is “augmentative” (Gondret) or has a positive argumentative orientation in Ducrot’s sense (Bacha), by hypothesizing that plusieurs is layered. This means that it conveys an asserted piece of information as well as an implicature, like peu (‘little’), un peu (‘a little’), presque (‘almost’), à peine (‘barely’, ‘hardly’) and others. This leads me, in particular, to make the notion of argumentative orientation more precise and to compare plusieurs and quelques (‘some’, ‘a few’), which is a ‘flat’ (non-stratified) determiner.

This paper proposes, in line with Giannakidou (2004), a novel compositional analysis of Basque strong quantifiers and provides further support for the conclusion that the standard analysis of Generalized Quantifiers need not be revised (pace Matthewson 2001). The Basque quantificational data offered provides clear evidence for the need for both quantificational (Westerståhl 1985, von Fintel 1994, Martí 2003) and nominal domain restriction (Stanley 2002, Stanley & Szabó 2000). Crucially, in Basque, the D domain restrictor only appears with strong quantifiers; it is excluded with weak quantifiers. This is taken to support the fact that these elements are not quantifiers and are not contextually restricted (cf. the standard position defended by Milsark 1979, Partee 1988, Diesing 1992, Cooper 1996, von Fintel 1998). Instead, it is argued that weak quantifiers are base-generated at the predicative type (Van Geenhoven 1998, Landman 2002).

Drozd & van Loosbroek (1999) and Geurts (2003) recently introduced the weakstrong distinction into the discussion concerning the acquisition of quantification. They predict that children will start out interpreting all quantifiers as weak ones. Our experiment was set up to test this hypothesis. Using the Truth Value Judgement Task, 39 children (aged between four and seven) and 7 adults were asked to interpret the Dutch quantifier allemaal (‘all’) in pronominal position in an existential sentence, in which allemaal gets a strictly weak reading, or in floated position, in which allemaal gets a strong reading. The strong interpretation of the quantifier is taken as cointersective and the weak one as intersective, following Keenan (2002). Only three children behaved according to the prediction and interpreted allemaal as a weak quantifier when it is presented in a strong quantifier position. The other thirty-six children interpreted the quantifier allemaal as a strong quantifier, even when it occurs in an existential sentence. We’ll argue that, contrary to Drozd & van Loosbroek’s and Geurts’ expectation, these children do not interpret quantifiers as weak, but as strong. They do this even in constructions where the quantifier is obligatorily weak for adults. This can, however, be analyzed within Geurts’ proposal.