Presuppositions for proportional quantifiers

Natural Language Semantics 4 (3):237-259 (1996)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Most studies of the so-called proportion problem seek to understand how lexical and structural properties of sentences containing adverbial quantifiers give rise to various proportional readings. This paper explores a related but distinct problem: given a use of a particular sentence in context, why do only some of the expected proportional readings seem to be available? That is, why do some sentences allow an asymmetric reading when other, structurally similar sentences seem to require a symmetric reading? Potential factors suggested in the literature include the distribution of donkey pronouns, certain uniqueness implications, and focus structures. I argue here that the use of an adverbial quantifier presupposes HOMOGENEITY: all individual situations that get lumped into a single case for the purposes of evaluating the quantification must agree on whether they satisfy the nuclear scope. For instance, in order for a token of Usually, if a farmer owns a donkey, he beats it to be felicitous when construed under a farmer-dominant asymmetric reading, the context must be consistent with the proposition that each farmer either beats all or none of his donkeys. Thus proportional sentences are indeed systematically ambiguous, but only some readings will be felicitous in a given context

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive

    This entry is not archived by us. If you are the author and have permission from the publisher, we recommend that you archive it. Many publishers automatically grant permission to authors to archive pre-prints. By uploading a copy of your work, you will enable us to better index it, making it easier to find.

    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 101,601

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Analytics

Added to PP
2013-12-01

Downloads
90 (#236,022)

6 months
4 (#1,291,232)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

Adverbial, descriptive reciprocals.Barry Schein - 2003 - Philosophical Perspectives 17 (1):333–367.
Common nouns as modally non-rigid restricted variables.Peter Lasersohn - 2020 - Linguistics and Philosophy 44 (2):363-424.
Donkey Demonstratives.Barbara Abbott - 2002 - Natural Language Semantics 10 (4):285-298.

View all 7 citations / Add more citations