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Questions with quantifiers

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Abstract

This paper studies the distribution of ‘list readings’ in questions like who does everyone like? vs. who likes everyone?. More generally, it focuses on the interaction between wh-words and quantified NPs. It is argued that, contrary to widespread belief, the pattern of available readings of constituent questions can be explained as a consequence of Weak Crossover, a well-known property of grammar. In particular, list readings are claimed to be a special case of ‘functional readings’, rather than arising from quantifying into questions. Functional readings are argued to be encoded in the syntax as doubly indexed traces, which straightforwardly leads to a Crossover account of the absence of list readings in who likes everyone?. Empirical and theoretical consequences of this idea for the syntax and semantics of questions are considered.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics Morrill Hall, Cornell University, 14850, Ithaca, NY, USA

    Gennaro Chierchia

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  1. Gennaro Chierchia
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Additional information

I am indebted for many helpful comments and criticisms to Irene Heim, Angelika Kratzer, Veneeta Srivastav, Martin Stokhof, Adam Wyner, Keiko Yoshida, and the NALS reviewers. This work was partially supported by NSF Grant BNS-9007804.

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Chierchia, G. Questions with quantifiers. Nat Lang Seman 1, 181–234 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00372562

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