Abstract
The theory of generalized quantifiers has extended the set of noun phrases (NP’s) we are able to interpret within a formal semantic framework. But there are also NP’s or reading of NP’s which cannot be interpreted as generalized quantifiers over the individual domain (in the sense of Barwise and Cooper 1981). The sentence
-
(1)
John and Harry lifted the stone.
May be true in a situation where neither John lifted the stone nor Harry lifted the stone because they did it together. This reading, called the collective reading of the sentence, is different from the generalized quantifier interpretation which yields the distributive reading:
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(2)
John lifted the stone and Harry lifted the stone.
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Lønning, J.T. (1987). Collective Readings of Definite and Indefinite Noun Phrases. In: Gärdenfors, P. (eds) Generalized Quantifiers. Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, vol 31. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3381-1_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3381-1_8
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