Strong Indefinites are not Quantificational

Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin (1)

1 LLF UMR7110 - Laboratoire de Linguistique Formelle

This paper is concerned with the analysis of strong indefinites and in particular of the proportional readings of many. Can we account for the proportional readings of many by assuming a uniform analysis, according to which many is a cardinality predicate, or do we need to postulate an ambiguity between a cardinality predicate and a quantificational determiner (Partee 1989)? I will argue in favour of the uniform analysis by comparing proportional most with proportional many: it will be shown that the former is necessarily a quantificational determiner (as in Generalized Quantifier theory, contra Hackl 2009), whereas the latter is a cardinality predicate inside a strong indefinite DP. This somewhat paradoxical result (a strong DP built with weak many) will be given a compositional semantics by assuming that constituents of the form many NP are headed by a null Determiner that has the semantics of plural some.

Mots clés: Generalized Quantifier Theory; quantificational determiners; strong indefinites

Domaines: Linguistique

Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin. Strong Indefinites are not Quantificational: proportional MANY vs MOST. Revue roumaine de linguistique, 2013, 4, pp.401-417. ⟨halshs-01119115⟩