Abstract
This paper contributes to the cross-linguistic study of indefinites by reporting on two experimental studies on the scopal and functional properties of the two Russian indefinites koe- and -to. We show that koe- allows not only wide scope readings out of syntactic islands, but also functional readings, much like English a certain. -to, on the other hand, allows all possible scopal readings and both functional and non-functional readings. We then discuss this state of affairs from the perspective of a number of prominent theories of indefinite scope.
Highlights
There is a long, well-‐known tradition in the formal semantics literature focused on indefinite existential scope
We show that Russian koe-‐ is in the same class as English a certain; the case of koe-‐ is less surprising from the perspective of this typology, but our results challenge the received view in the literature that koe-‐ does not allow functional readings
We examined whether including a bound variable pronoun in the indefinite in such examples affected availability of functional readings in Russian, and found that it did not
Summary
There is a long, well-‐known tradition in the formal semantics literature focused on indefinite existential scope Consider three possible readings for the sentence in (1), with a (certain): two readings that involve scope outside of the relative clause island (in brackets), namely, a wide scope reading (WSR on) in (1)a, and an intermediate scope reading (ISR) in (1)b (where the indefinite escapes an island but takes scope underneath a higher quantifier, every in this case), and a third reading that does not, the narrow scope reading (NSR) in (1)c: (1) Every student read every article [that a (certain) professor recommended]. A. There is a professor x such that for every student y, y read every article that x recommended. B. For every student y, there is a (potentially different) professor x, such that y read every article that x recommended. There is a (potentially different) professor x, such that y read every article that x recommended. [ISR]
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