Collective quantification and the homogeneity constraint

Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin (1)

1 LLF UMR7110 - Laboratoire de Linguistique Formelle

The main theoretical claim of the paper is that a slightly revised version of the analysis of mass quantifiers proposed in Roeper 1983, Lønning 1987 and Higginbotham 1994 extends to collective quantifiers: such quantifiers denote relations between sums of entities (type e), rather than relations between sets of sums (type ). Against this background I will explain a puzzle observed by Dowty (1986) for all and generalized to all quantifiers by Winter 2002: plural quantification is not allowed with all the predicates that are traditionally classified as " collective ". The Homogeneity Constraint will be shown to be too strong and it will be replaced with the weaker requirement of Divisiveness (for both collective and mass quantifiers). Non-divisive predicates such as form a mafia are also allowed, but they will be argued to induce a different type of quantifier, which denotes a relation between entities and sets of entities.

Mots clés: collective quantification; mass quantification; homogeneous; cumulative; divisive; groups; sums; maximality operator; plural logic

Domaines: Linguistique

Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin. Collective quantification and the homogeneity constraint. Proceedings of SALT, 24, pp.453 - 472, 2015, Proceedings of SALT 24, ⟨10.3765/salt.v24i0.2428⟩. ⟨halshs-01560308⟩