Abstract
Distributivity in natural language occurs in sentences such as John and Mary (each) took a deep breath, when a predicate that is combined with a plurality-denoting expression is understood as holding of each of the members of that plurality. Language provides ways to express distributivity overtly, with words such as English each, but also covertly, when no one word can be regarded as contributing it. Both overt and covert distributivity occur in a wide variety of constructions. This article reviews and synthesizes influential approaches to distributivity in formal semantics and includes pointers to some more recent approaches.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 289-308 |
| Number of pages | 20 |
| Journal | Annual Review of Linguistics |
| Volume | 5 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2019 |
Keywords
- Distributivity
- covers
- groups
- mereology
- operators
- plurality
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Language and Linguistics
- Linguistics and Language