Cumulative readings of every do not provide evidence for events and thematic roles

Lucas Champollion

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

    Abstract

    An argument by Kratzer (2000) based on Schein (1986, 1993) does not conclusively show that events and thematic roles are necessary ingredients of the logical representation of natural language sentences. The argument claims that cumulative readings of every can be represented only with these ingredients. But scope-splitting accounts make it possible to represent cumulative readings of every in an eventless framework. Such accounts are motivated by obligatory reconstruction effects of every and by crosslinguistic considerations. Kratzer proposes that agent but not theme occurs in the logical representation of sentences because this allows her to model subject-object asymmetries in the distribution of cumulative every. But the reason for these asymmetries seems to be that every must be c-commanded by another quantifier in order to cumulate with it, no matter what its thematic role is. So the distribution of cumulative every does not provide support for Kratzer's proposal.

    Original languageEnglish (US)
    Title of host publicationLogic, Language and Meaning - 17th Amsterdam Colloquium, Revised Selected Papers
    Pages213-222
    Number of pages10
    DOIs
    StatePublished - 2010
    Event17th Amsterdam Colloquium on Logic, Language and Meaning - Amsterdam, Netherlands
    Duration: Dec 16 2009Dec 18 2009

    Publication series

    NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
    Volume6042 LNAI
    ISSN (Print)0302-9743
    ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

    Other

    Other17th Amsterdam Colloquium on Logic, Language and Meaning
    Country/TerritoryNetherlands
    CityAmsterdam
    Period12/16/0912/18/09

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Theoretical Computer Science
    • General Computer Science

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