April 24, 1999

Time:

3:00pm, April 24, 1999

Place:

Room L-620, 6th floor, Central Library, Sophia University.

Speaker:

Uli Sauerland (Kanda University of International Studies)

Title:

What do Quantifiers Range Over?

Abstract:

Current theories of DP quantification posit a dichotomy between interrogative quantifiers, which are allowed to quantify over choice or Skolem functions (e.g. Engdahl 1980, 1986, Chierchia 1992), and non-interrogative quantifiers, which are restricted to quantification over individuals. Evidence from the distribution of Condition C effects (Chomsky 1993, Fox 1994) and identity of trace effects in Antecedent Contained Deletion (Sauerland 1998) shows that the dichotomy is not only conceptually, but also empirically problematic. This talk develops a uniform semantics for DP quantification, in which all quantifiers uniformly quantify over choice functions. Von Stechow (1996)'s earlier proposal along these lines is shown to make wrong predictions for proportional and cardinal quantifiers, as well as cases involving a bound variable. As a refinement of von Stechow's proposal, I propose to restrict quantification over pointwise different choice functions.