Quantificational variability effects with German 'größtenteils' and implicit agents

Abstract

This paper investigates quantificational variability effects (QVE) with adverbs of quantity, focusing on German grostenteils and the QV-interpretations that arise with arguments of the main verb. I propose that these QV-interpretations are plausibly a result of gr¨ostenteils directly composing with the argument showing QVE. In the first part of the paper, I analyze the syntactic behavior and semantic contribution of gr¨ostenteils and show how the QVE with explicit arguments of the main verb can be captured. In the second part, the proposal is adapted slightly to be compatible with an event-based analysis of verbal meaning, and I show that the amended proposal and Bruening’s (2013) account of short eventive passives suffice to capture QVE with grostenteils and implicit agents. As a consequence, the availability of such QV-interpretations cannot be taken as evidence for the view that implicit agents are syntactically represented (pace Alexiadou and M¨uller 2018; M¨uller 2019).