A constraint on co-occurrence of partitive quantifiers and gradable predicates

Abstract

Quantifiers like most of are compatible with some predicates but not others, e.g., Most of the road is {narrow / #long}. In the context of collective predicates, this is known as the gather/numerous distinction. This paper focuses on gradable predicates—both singular and collective—and argues that only non-monotonic gradable predicates are compatible with quantifiers like most of. I show that if a monotonic predicate co-occurs with such a quantifier, the sentence does not have well-defined truth conditions, which makes it unacceptable.