Genuine and Apparent Scope Readings

Abstract

Having pointed out my view of topicality, I will now set the stage for the second main topic of this book, which are the exceptional wide scope phenomena. In this chapter, I will discuss the highly controversial term specificity, which will in the end be argued to be a notion that only makes sense in the context of opaque operators. Specific readings hence have to be set apart from wide scope readings in truly transparent contexts. I will furthermore discuss methods which can serve to differentiate between apparent wide scope readings and genuine wide scope readings of indefinites in a systematic way. Furthermore, I will discuss functional readings, which can also be indicative of wide scope readings, as I will show.