Quantification and Negation in Event Semantics

Recently, it has been claimed that event semantics does not go well together with quantification, especially if one rejects syntactic, LF-based approaches to quantifier scope. This paper shows that such fears are unfounded, by presenting a simple, variable-free framework which combines a Neo-Davidsonian event semantics with a type-shifting based account of quantifier scope. The main innovation is that the event variable is bound inside the verbal denotation, rather than at sentence level by existential closure. Quantifiers can then be interpreted in situ. The resulting framework combines the strengths of event semantics and type-shifting accounts of quantifiers and thus does not force the semanticist to posit either a default underlying word order or a syntactic LF-style level. It is therefore well suited for applications to languages where word order is free and quantifier scope is determined by surface order. As an additional benefit, the system leads to a straightforward account of negation, which has also been claimed to be problematic for event-based frameworks. References Barker, Chris. 2002. ‘Continuations and the nature of quantification’. Natural Language Semantics 10: 211–242. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1022183511876 Barker, Chris & Shan, Chung-chieh. 2008. ‘Donkey anaphora is in-scope binding’. Semantics and Pragmatics 1: 1–46. Beaver, David & Condoravdi, Cleo. 2007. ‘On the logic of verbal modification’. In Maria Aloni, Paul Dekker & Floris Roelofsen (eds.) ‘Proceedings of the Sixteenth Amsterdam Colloquium’, 3–9. Amsterdam, Netherlands: University of Amsterdam. Beghelli, Filippo & Stowell, Tim. 1997. ‘Distributivity and negation: The syntax of each and every’. In Anna Szabolcsi (ed.) ‘Ways of scope taking’, 71–107. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer. Brasoveanu, Adrian. 2010. ‘Modified Numerals as Post-Suppositions’. In Maria Aloni, Harald Bastiaanse, Tikitu de Jager & Katrin Schulz (eds.) ‘Logic, Language and Meaning’, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 6042, 203–212. Berlin, Germany: Springer. Carlson, Gregory N. 1977. Reference to Kinds in English. Ph.D. thesis, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA. Carlson, Gregory N. 1984. ‘Thematic roles and their role in semantic interpretation’. Linguistics 22: 259–279. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/ling.1984.22.3.259 Champollion, Lucas. 2010. Parts of a whole: Distributivity as a bridge between aspect and measurement. Ph.D. thesis, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA. Champollion, Lucas, Tauberer, Josh & Romero, Maribel. 2007. ‘The Penn Lambda Calculator: Pedagogical software for natural