Ebert Quantificational Topics

A Scopal Treatment of Exceptional Wide Scope Phenomena
2009
ISBN: 978-90-481-2303-2
Verlag: Springer Netherlands
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 86, 306 Seiten

Reihe: Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy

Addressing an issue that has puzzled the linguistics community for many years, this book offers a novel approach to the exceptional wide scope behaviour of indefinites. It is the first book explicitly dedicated to exceptional wide scope phenomena. Its unique approach offers an explanation for the fact that it is only a proper subset of the indefinites that shows this exceptional wide scope behaviour. The author draws a careful distinction between genuine and apparent scope readings, a distinction that is usually not taken care of and has thus led to certain confusions. In particular, it is argued that functional readings have to be kept strictly apart from non-functional ones and that all proposals that use functional mechanisms to explain the phenomena at hand face severe problems. The existing body of literature on the main issues of the book is thoroughly reviewed. This makes the book well suited as background literature for graduate seminars on those topics.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ebert, Cornelia

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1;Contents;7
2;Acknowledgements;10
3;1 Introduction;11
3.1;1.1 Information Structure;11
3.2;1.2 Truth-Conditional Effects of Information Structure;15
3.3;1.3 Topical Quantifiers;16
3.4;1.4 Topicality and Exceptional Wide Scope;18
3.5;1.5 An Outline of the Proposal;22
3.6;1.6 The Structure of this Book;26
4;2 Topicality;28
4.1;2.1 Defining Topicality;28
4.2;2.2 Topic Tests and Topical Quantifiers;38
4.3;2.3 Conclusion;64
5;3 Genuine and Apparent Scope Readings;66
5.1;3.1 Specificity;66
5.2;3.2 Wide Scope;78
5.3;3.3 Functional readings;95
5.4;3.4 Conclusion;113
6;4 ExceptionalWide Scope;116
6.1;4.1 Scope Islands;116
6.2;4.2 The Class ofWide Scope Quantifiers;121
6.3;4.3 Genuine vs. Apparent Exceptional Wide Scope;124
6.4;4.4 Approaches Relying on Speaker’s Reference;127
6.5;4.5 Approaches Relying on Domain Restriction;142
6.6;4.6 Presuppositional Approaches;147
6.7;4.7 Choice Function Approaches;161
6.8;4.8 Approaches Relying on Wide Extraction;191
6.9;4.9 Discussion;191
6.10;4.10 Conclusion;193
7;5 Semantic Effects of Topicality;195
7.1;5.1 Types of Aboutness Topics;195
7.2;5.2 Intonation;199
7.3;5.3 Topicality Induces Wide Scope;205
7.4;5.4 Does a Strong Interpretation Imply Topicality?;214
7.5;5.5 Approaches Relating ExceptionalWide Scope to Topicality;216
7.6;5.6 Conclusion;219
8;6 ExceptionalWide Scope as a Topic Phenomenon;220
8.1;6.1 Deriving the Classification;223
8.2;6.2 Technical Preliminaries;229
8.3;6.3 Components of the Theory;242
8.4;6.4 Deriving Wide Scope via Topicality;253
8.5;6.5 Intermediate Scope Readings;256
8.6;6.6 Functional Topics;267
8.7;6.7 Conclusion;275
9;7 Conclusion;277
10;Appendix A Technicalities and Experiments;286
10.1;A.1 Generalized Quantifiers;286
10.2;A.2 Pilot Studies;288
11;Bibliography;296