Abstract

The main proposal of this paper is that quantifier raising (QR) is not subject to QR-specific locality or domain restrictions but that differences observed between overt and covert movement are the result of an increased processing burden associated with multiple steps of covert movement and the lack of a cue for the parser to initiate a search for a covert dependency. One of the main observations is that QR from different types of clausal complements is gradient and speakers’ acceptance of non-local inverse scope tracks syntactic complexity defined over clausal domains. The account develops a preliminary algorithm for calculating processing costs based on the complexity of the structure, which in turn is reflected in the number of steps QR has to undergo in a cyclic movement approach to inverse scope.

Highlights

  • The domain of quantifier scope or quantifier raising (QR) is often claimed to be the clause where the quantifier originates in, even in languages that are not characterized as scope-rigid

  • The cost of QR is observable as increased reading times of sentences with inverse scope and, for ambiguous sentences, a higher rate of surface scope than inverse scope

  • Additional factors increase the processing burden, which may lead to unacceptibility of an inverse scope interpretation

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Summary

Introduction

The domain of quantifier scope or quantifier raising (QR) is often claimed to be the clause where the quantifier originates in, even in languages that are not characterized as scope-rigid. QR across a finite clause boundary (and possibly a non-restructuring infinitive) can be excluded by syntactic locality in conjunction with an economy constraint on scope (Fox 2000, Cecchetto 2004, Takahashi 2011, Wurmbrand 2013), and by allowing ACD to ‘lift’ that constraint (Cecchetto 2004). The difficulty of non-clause-bound QR can be seen as the result of a processing economy condition (Anderson 2004, Tanaka 2015, Wurmbrand 2016) triggering higher processing costs for steps of QR spanning finite clause boundaries and by ACD reducing those costs or facilitating the inverse scope interpretation despite the costs. The mapping between syntactic structure and processing as relevant for scope is detailed in section 4.2, and section 4.3 provides a preliminary algorithm for calculating QR-related processing costs

Syntactic scope economy
Processing scope economy
QR in simple clauses and ellipsis
QR from finite clauses and islands
QR from non-finite clauses
Summary
The domains of complement clauses
Counting steps—towards a processing account
The cost of QR
Cost and acceptability
Calculating costs
Findings
Conclusion

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