Quantifier Scope Ambiguities

Abstract

Abstract Sentences containing quantifiers are often ambiguous, as quantificational DPs interact with one another, and with wh ‐phrases, negation, and adverbials. This kind of ambiguity is an ambiguity with respect to the scope of the quantifiers. However, sentences containing several quantifiers or operators are not always scope ambiguous: compare, for example, the ambiguous Some of us always showed up with the unequivocal Always, some of us showed up . Thus, the scope of quantifiers is not essentially free; there is a complex pattern of ambiguous and unequivocal sentences containing quantifiers and operators. An adequate analysis of scope ambiguities should be able to predict this complex pattern in a principled way, which should encompass a sensible view of the interface between syntax and semantics. According to the dominant view in generative grammar, scope relations can be deduced from the c‐command relations on Logical Form, where quantifiers are assigned scope by quantifier raising. Variants of and alternatives to this dominant view have been proposed, for some partly motivated by the scope facts in languages other than English (in particular, Mandarin Chinese and Hungarian have been taken into consideration), and for some partly motivated by a more thorough look at the (English) data and/or by modification or substitution of the basic framework. It became apparent that quantifier scope relations crucially depend on certain properties of the quantifiers, whose exact nature is not yet settled, however. The interplay of these properties seems to determine the complex pattern of ambiguous and unequivocal sentences containing quantifiers and operators. The challenge is to uncover the nature of these scope‐relevant properties and account for their interplay within a general conception of the interface between syntax and semantics.