The scope and processing of for-adverbials: A reply to Deo and Piñango

Abstract

Deo & Piñango (2011) propose a novel account of measure adverbials like for an hour that focuses on their puzzling scopal behavior, their ability to shift predicates into iterative interpretations, and the higher processing cost that this shift engenders. The scopal behavior, though not the processing cost, had been previously modeled in classical accounts of for-adverbials (e.g. Dowty 1979; Krifka 1998). Unlike these accounts, D&P do not provide a semantic explanation of the aspectual sensitivity of for-adverbials. I argue that only a synthesis of D&P and classical accounts captures the full empirical picture. This synthesis both restores the explanation of the aspectual sensitivity, and improves on D&P’s account of the scopal behavior. It also opens the door to an explanation of data which suggests that the processing cost of iterativity is not uniform, but varies according to the algebraic properties of the underlying predicates.