Certain Verbs Are Syntactically Explicit Quantifiers

Quantification over individuals, times, and worlds can in principle be made explicit in the syntax of the object language, or left to the semantics and spelled out in the meta-language. The traditional view is that quantification over individuals is syntactically explicit, whereas quantification over times and worlds is not. But a growing body of literature proposes a uniform treatment. This paper examines the scopal interaction of aspectual raising verbs (begin), modals (can), and intensional raising verbs (threaten) with quantificational subjects in Shupamem, Dutch, and English. It appears that aspectual raising verbs and at least modals may undergo the same kind of overt or covert scope-changing operations as nominal quantifiers; the case of intensional raising verbs is less clear. Scope interaction is thus shown to be a new potential diagnostic of object-linguistic quantification, and the similarity in the scope behavior of nominal and verbal quantifiers supports the grammatical plausibility of ontological symmetry, explored in Schlenker (2006). References Ben-Shalom, D. 1996. Semantic Trees. Ph.D. thesis, UCLA. Bittner, M. 1993. Case, Scope, and Binding. Dordrecht: Reidel. Cresswell, M. 1990. Entities and Indices. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Cresti, D. 1995. ‘Extraction and reconstruction’. Natural Language Semantics 3: 79–122. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF01252885 Curry, B. H. & Feys, R. 1958. Combinatory Logic I. Dordrecht: North-Holland. Dowty, D. R. 1988. ‘Type raising, functional composition, and non-constituent conjunction’. In Richard T. Oehrle, Emmon W. Bach & Deirdre Wheeler (eds.) ‘Categorial Grammars and Natural Language Structures’, 153–197. Dordrecht: Reidel. Fox, D. 2002. ‘TOn Logical Form’. In Randall Hendrick (ed.) ‘Minimalist Syntax’, 82–124. Oxford: Blackwell. Gallin, D. 1975. Intensional and higher-order modal logic: with applications to Montague semantics. North Holland Pub. Co.; American Elsevier Pub. Co., Amsterdam: New York. Groenendijk, J. & Stokhof, M. 1984. The Semantics of Questions and the Pragmatics of Answers. Ph.D. thesis, University of Amsterdam. Heim, I. 1992. ‘Presupposition projection and the semantics of attitude reports’. Journal of Semantics 9: 183–221. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jos/9.3.183 Heim, I. 2001. ‘Features of Pronouns in Semantics and Morphology’. Ms., Universit t Tübingen. Heim, I. & Kratzer, A. 1998. Semantics in Generative Grammar. Oxford: Blackwell. Herman, H. 1993. Studied Flexibility: Categories and Types in Syntax and Semantics. Ph.D. thesis, University of Amsterdam. Hintikka, J. 1962. Knowledge and Belief