Scopal Properties Research Articles

Everything is not equal in adult and child Dutch

Abstract An investigation into the production of universal quantifiers with negation in the CHILDES database of Dutch shows several scopal properties that have not been discussed before. First, it shows a crucial distinction between child and adult Dutch. A universal quantifier with scope over negation has an isomorphic interpretation in adult Dutch, but an inverse scope interpretation in child Dutch. This raises the question why children do not adopt the surface scope interpretation. Second, it indicates a possible answer to the puzzle why languages often avoid a universal quantifier under the scope of negation. I will discuss the idea that the explanation may lie in the type of reading of a quantifier, collective/distributive and specific/non-specific. It might also explain why no language has a lexicalized negated universal pronoun *neverything.

Type-Restricted Argument Ellipsis and Generalized Quantifiers

Theories of argument ellipsis based on PF deletion or LF copying do not generate predictions regarding possible constraints on the semantic type of the elided argument. Yet such constraints obtain, as documented in Landau 2022: only type-e arguments can be targeted by argument ellipsis. Focusing on quantificational arguments here, I show that when they yield readings expressible by type-e denotations, they may elide, but when they denote genuine generalized quantifiers, they may not. Utilizing the restricted range of interpretations made available by choice function binding and E-type pronouns, the analysis derives a number of peculiar scopal properties of indefinite NPs, quantifiers, and exceptive phrases under argument ellipsis.

Generative Grammar: A Meaning First Approach.

The theory of language must predict the possible thought—signal (or meaning—sound or sign) pairings of a language. We argue for a Meaning First architecture of language where a thought structure is generated first. The thought structure is then realized using language to communicate the thought, to memorize it, or perhaps with another purpose. Our view contrasts with the T-model architecture of mainstream generative grammar, according to which distinct phrase-structural representations—Phonetic Form (PF) for articulation, Logical Form (LF) for interpretation—are generated within the grammar. At the same time, our view differs from early transformational grammar and generative semantics: We view the relationship between the thought structure and the corresponding signal as one of compression. We specify a formal sketch of compression as a choice between multiple possible pronounciations balancing the desire to transmit information against the effort of pronounciation. The Meaning First architecture allows a greater degree of independence between thought structures and the linguistic signal. We present three arguments favoring this type of independence. First we argue that scopal properties can be better explained if we only compare thought structures independent of the their realization as a sentence. Secondly, we argue that Meaning First architecture allows contentful late insertion, an idea that has been argued for in Distributed Morphology already, but as we argue is also motivated by the division of the logical and socio-emotive meaning content of language. Finally, we show that only the Meaning First architecture provides a satisfying account of the mixing of multiple languages by multilingual speakers, especially for cases of simultaneous articulation across two modalities in bimodal speakers. Our view of the structure of grammar leads to a reassessment of priorities in linguistic analyses: while current mainstream work is often focused on establishing one-to-one relationships between concepts and morphemes, our view makes it plausible that primitive concepts are frequently marked indirectly or unpronounced entirely. Our view therefore assigns great value to the understanding of logical primitives and of compression.

A syntax for semantic incorporation: generating low-scope indefinite objects in Inuktitut

The range of scope readings for Inuktitut nominal expressions appears superficially to depend on the verbal morpho-syntax, with noun incorporation and antipassive inflection both playing a role. A new model is presented in which the syntactic role played by agreement features in Case theory is unified with the absence of a choice functional D in the semantic interpretation. For both, a phase-level D-deletion operation ensures the correct results. The model is shown to account for the scopal properties of nominals in a range of contexts larger than the literature typically considers, including incorporation of predicational, locational, and locative nouns, and non-modalis-marked arguments of non-antipassive verbs.

On Matrix‐Clause Intervention in Accusative‐and‐Infinitive Constructions

AbstractOne of the strongest arguments for a raising‐to‐object analysis of English accusative‐and‐infinitive constructions comes from the fact that adverbials and particles belonging to the matrix clause can intervene between the embedded subject and the embedded predicate. We reevaluate this argument in the light of a neglected alternative analysis, namely that matrix‐clause intervention is the result of extraposition of the embedded predicate. We show that this analysis gives a better account of matrix‐clause intervention than raising to object. Our arguments are based on the scopal properties of the embedded subject and on the order among multiple intervening elements. We also consider various mixed analyses that feature both raising to object and extraposition. These turn out to be conceptually awkward and empirically flawed.

Wide scope indefinites in Russian: an experimental investigation

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.

Focus effects on quantifier domains in a visual verification task

In a visual verification study we investigated how syntactic focus affects the interpretation of quantifiers. We compared the effect of syntactic focus on the truth conditions of sentences with the quantificational adverbonlyand the superlative quantifiermostin Polish. In this language, the scopal properties ofmostas well as the syntactic construction of the sentence final focus allowed us to predict parallel focus association patterns for both quantifiers. We found that, indeed, syntactic focus is able to guide the attention during visual verification. It is known that prosodic focus is immediately integrated during semantic processing, our study is the first to demonstrate that syntactic focus can facilitate the verification of the truth of a sentence, by guiding attention towards the more salient information in the picture, i.e., the set of focus alternatives.

From HAVE to HAVE-verbs: Relations and incorporation

We bring together two lines of research. The first is that of so-called HAVE-verbs, which come with the peculiarity of allowing for bare nominal objects in Norwegian, Catalan, Romanian, etc. These languages normally impose the use of articles in argument position and don’t have a generalized incorporation option. The second is that of HAVE itself, a verb that has been claimed to select (predicative) relations rather than arguments in many languages including English. We argue that the literature on relational HAVE provides the key to understanding why HAVE-verbs behave as incorporation verbs. We further show how a unified analysis sheds light on the scopal properties of relational HAVE.

Gapping as hypothetical reasoning

The scope anomaly observed in sentences like Mrs. J can’t live in Boston and Mr. J in LA (¬◊>∧) and No dog eats Whiskas or cat Alpo (¬∃>∨) is known to pose difficult challenges to many analyses of Gapping. We provide new arguments, based on both the basic syntactic patterns of Gapping and standard constituency tests, that the so-called ‘low VP coordination analysis’—the only extant analysis of Gapping in contemporary syntactic theories which accounts for this scope anomaly—is empirically untenable. We propose an explicit alternative analysis of Gapping in Hybrid Type-Logical Categorial Grammar, a variant of categorial grammar which builds on both the Lambek-inspired tradition and a more recent line of work modelling word order via a lambda calculus for the prosodic component. The flexible syntax-semantics interface of this framework enables us to characterize Gapping as an instance of like-category coordination, via a crucial use of the notion of hypothetical reasoning. This analysis of the basic syntax of Gapping is shown to interact with independently motivated analyses of scopal operators to immediately yield their apparently anomalous scopal properties in Gapping, offering, for the first time in the literature, a conceptually simple and empirically adequate solution for the notorious scope anomaly in Gapping.

Negative structure and object movement in Japanese

This paper investigates negative structure in Japanese. The scope of Japanese negation appears to be narrower than that of English, which has led to different treatment of Japanese and English negation in the literature. I propose an analysis that maintains the same negative structure for Japanese and English. I demonstrate that all the scope facts regarding negative sentences in Japanese can be accounted for if we assume obligatory object movement into the TP-domain in Japanese, that is, the difference between Japanese and English is not the structural position of negation but the existence of this obligatory object movement in Japanese. The analysis also involves a discussion of scopal properties of certain elements such as focused or disjunctive phrases, which play a crucial role to determine the position of objects. Then I argue that the obligatory object movement in Japanese is driven by the need for accusative Case-particle licensing, on the basis of the observation that objects without a Case-particle are generally immobile in Japanese. I show that this analysis leads to a new perspective on A-scrambling in Japanese.

Strategies for scope taking

This squib reports the results of two experimental studies, a binary choice and a self-paced reading study, that provide strong support for the hypothesis in Tunstall (PhD thesis, 1998) that the distinct scopal properties of each and every are at least to some extent the consequence of an event-differentiation requirement contributed by each (Tunstall herself conducted an experiment that did not reveal the predicted effect). However, we also show that the emerging picture is more complex than Tunstall suggests: English speakers seem to fall into at least three groups regarding the scopal properties of each and every.

Split quantification and the status of adjunction in the theory of grammar

AbstractThis article provides new evidence in favor of recognizing adjunction as a grammatical operation distinct from complementation. I first introduce a case of split quantification in French that has received little attention in the literature. It consists of a quantificational expression the restriction of which is made up of the element comme ‘as’ followed by a bare common noun. I refer to this construct as QCN. I then compare QCN with two well‐known cases of split quantification: quantification at a distance in French (QAD) and the so‐called was‐für/wat voor split quantification construction found in German and Dutch. I argue that a coherent account of those properties of French QCN that contrast with those of French QAD and German was‐für sentences can only emerge from a theory of phrase structure that recognizes that arguments and adjuncts are subject to different requirements within the workspace. I show that if one assumes that QCN restrictor phrases are QP‐modifying adjuncts that need not be present in the derivation while their QP host is undergoing Merge or Move (but can be introduced at a later stage in the derivation when their host is acting as the complement or specifier of some other projection), the patterns of locality restrictions observed for QCN as well as the scopal properties of this construction can be accounted for. This, I claim, constitute strong evidence against theories of phrase structure that do not recognize adjunction as a grammatical operation distinct from complementation.

External negation in Malay/Indonesian

Two distinct negation markers compete in Malay/Indonesian verbal clauses. I argue that one (also used to negate nominal predicates) is a marker of ‘external’ (sentential) negation, while the other is a marker of ‘internal’ (predicate) negation. This contrast is demonstrated by striking differences in syntactic distribution and scopal properties. In verbal clauses the marker of predicate negation is the default, while the marker of sentential negation is allowed only in certain pragmatically determined contexts. These contexts include: (i) contrastive sentences, (ii) marked narrow focus, and (iii) metalinguistic negation. External negation in Malay is restricted to ‘root clauses’; I suggest that this is due to its echoic character.

Negation, Polarity, and Deontic Modals

Universal deontic modals may vary with respect to whether they scope over or under negation. For instance, English modals like must and should take wide scope with respect to negation; modals like have to and need to take narrow scope. Similar patterns have been attested in other languages. In this article, we argue that the scopal properties of modals with respect to negation can be understood if (a) modals that outscope negation are positive polarity items ( PPIs); (b) all modals originate in a position lower than I0; and (c) modals undergo reconstruction unless reconstruction leads to a PPI-licensing violation.

How indefinites choose their scope

The paper proposes a novel solution to the problem of scope posed by natural language indefinites that captures both the difference in scopal freedom between indefinites and bona fide quantifiers and the syntactic sensitivity that the scope of indefinites does nevertheless exhibit. Following the main insight of choice functional approaches, we connect the special scopal properties of indefinites to the fact that their semantics can be stated in terms of choosing a suitable witness. This is in contrast to bona fide quantifiers, the semantics of which crucially involves relations between sets of entities. We provide empirical arguments that this insight should not be captured by adding choice/Skolem functions to classical first-order logic, but in a semantics that follows Independence-Friendly Logic, in which scopal relations involving existentials are part of the recursive definition of truth and satisfaction. These scopal relations are resolved automatically as part of the interpretation of existentials. Additional support for this approach is provided by dependent indefinites, a cross-linguistically common class of special indefinites that can be straightforwardly analyzed in our semantic framework.

When QR Disobeys Superiority

In recent minimalist theorizing, the operation of quantifier raising (QR) changing scopal properties of quantifiers is commonly viewed as having essentially a syntactic origin but a semantic effect. Bruening (2001 ) provides strong support for this view by investigating the effect of scope freezing: the scopal relations between two quantifiers one of which c-commands the other do not change when each of them undergoes QR. This is the case, in particular, in English double object constructions: the two quantifiers in (la) do not exhibit scopal ambiguity. By a similar token, pair-list (P-L) answers expected when a quantifier moves over (a trace of) a w/i-phrase (May 1985) are not elicited by w/i-questions like (2a) (for those speakers who accept (2a) at all).

Scope and Situation Binding in LTAG Using Semantic Unification

This paper sets up a framework for Lexicalized Tree Adjoining Grammar (LTAG) semantics that brings together ideas from different recent approaches addressing some shortcomings of LTAG semantics based on the derivation tree. The approach assigns underspecified semantic representations and semantic feature structure descriptions to elementary trees. Semantic computation is guided by the derivation tree and consists of adding feature value equations to the descriptions. A rigorous formal definition of the framework is given. Then, within this framework, an analysis is proposed that accounts for the different scopal properties of quantificational NPs (including nested NPs), adverbs, raising verbs and attitude verbs. Furthermore, by integrating situation variables in the semantics, different situation binding possibilities are derived for different types of quantificational elements.

Parentheticals in Underspecified Semantics: The Case of Evaluative Adverbs

Previous studies of parenthetical expressions suffer from not making a clear distinction between prosodic, syntactic, semantic, and illocutionary properties. We distinguish parentheticality, the illocutionary property of providing a comment on the main content of the utterance, from incidentality, the grammatical status of an expression which is set apart prosodically from the rest of the sentence. While incidentality correlates with positional and scopal properties, parentheticality is an orthogonal property with no specific reflex in form. We then discuss the analysis of parentheticality at the syntax semantics interface, focusing on French evaluative adverbs such as bizarrement ‘oddly’. The issue is to model the fact that parenthetical content can appear syntactically embedded, while being interpreted outside of the main content on which it provides a comment. We show that Potts’s analysis [Potts, C. (2005). The logic of conventional implicatures. Oxford University Press], while addressing many of the crucial properties of evaluatives, fails to account for their semantic embeddability. We propose an explicit analysis within an HPSG grammar, based on a modification of MRS (Copestake et al. (2006) Research on Language and Computation, 3, 281–332). In this framework, parenthetical content can be ‘set apart’ from the main semantic composition and interpreted at a higher level. The tight integration of syntax and semantics provided by HPSG allows us to introduce appropriate interface constraints on where this parenthetical content can scope.

Association with Focus and Choice Functions ? A Binding Approach

In a discussion of the scopal properties of focus, Rooth [(1996)The Handbook of Contemporary Semantic Theory. B. Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 271–298] notes that association with focus, indefinites and in situ wh-phrases appear to form a class of island-insensitive phenomena, and suggests that this is the natural consequence of a common semantic property. In this paper, I analyse the hypothesis that this lowest common denominator is an analysis based on choice functions. Generalizing Reinhart,s [1994 Technical Report OTS-WP-TL-94-003, OTS Working Papers, Utrecht University] binding analysis to association with focus, I propose that – similar to the case of indefinites and wh-phrases – focus introduces a choice function variable that operates on a contextually given set of alternatives, and gets bound by a coindexed focus-sensitive operator like, for example, the particle only. Having shown that this approach accounts for a wide range of data, it is compared to a similar one made in Wold [(1996)Proceedings of SALT VI. Ithaca, N.Y., pp. 311–328], and, in the light of the discussion of ‘association with focus phrase’, a possible extension of the analysis is taken into consideration.

When finiteness gets marked: the relation between morphosyntactic development and use of scopal items in adult language acquisition

This paper investigates the acquisition of scope in L2 English and French, using longitudinal data from five informants from the ESF database (Feldweg 1993). The scopal items analyzed are negation and additive, restrictive, and temporal items. These items are found to be acquired in a fixed order, with negation preceding additive and restrictive particles (also, only, and equivalents), which in turn precede the temporal items. For these latter, forms marking the iteration of an event (again) are used before temporal adverbs of contrast (TACs: already, still, no more). The learners studied have been independently shown (Klein and Perdue 1992, 1997) to progress from a nominal utterance organization, through an organization based on an uninflected verb (the basic variety), and on to utterances organized around a finite verb, and the placement and scopal properties of the items analyzed correspond closely to this development. Items occur first in nominal utterances adjacent to the constituent they affect, then immediately before the VP or at the utterance boundary, then immediately behind the finite verb. It is only at this final stage that an item is integrated within the utterance structure while affecting a nonadjacent constituent. Furthermore, it is only at this stage that TACs occur, in the same position. Two types of explanation can be proposed for this correspondence between the acquisition order of the particles and the development first of VP, then of verbal morphology: i. These particles affect the constituents available at a given point of development. The first (additive and restrictive) particles apply their meaning to NP referents and the first temporal items to be used quantify over whole events (different tokens of the same TT-Tsit relation: Klein 1994), while TACs affect phases of an event, thus requiring an independent specification of tense, on the finite verb. ii. The development of finiteness marking is a central feature of the grammaticalizati