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Chapter 11. Licensing distributivity

The role of plural morphology
  • Hanna de Vries
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Crossroads Semantics
This chapter is in the book Crossroads Semantics

Abstract

This study investigates how the availability of quantificational distributivity depends on the morphosyntactic number of the VP, based on two different case studies: first, the behaviour of sentences with a group NP subject (such as the class or my family) in British English; and second, the interpretation of coordinated VPs in sentences like The guests are surrounding the newlyweds and singing or dancing. I argue that distributivity is only available when the VP is plural, not when it is singular or uninflected. This approach goes back to Link’s (1983) original intuition that pluralisation and distributivity are two sides of the same coin. It also provides support for compositional analyses of semantic pluralisation, according to which predicates originate as singular and are pluralised at a higher derivational level, instead of being “born plural” as in e.g. Krifka (1992), Landman (1996), and Kratzer (2008).

Abstract

This study investigates how the availability of quantificational distributivity depends on the morphosyntactic number of the VP, based on two different case studies: first, the behaviour of sentences with a group NP subject (such as the class or my family) in British English; and second, the interpretation of coordinated VPs in sentences like The guests are surrounding the newlyweds and singing or dancing. I argue that distributivity is only available when the VP is plural, not when it is singular or uninflected. This approach goes back to Link’s (1983) original intuition that pluralisation and distributivity are two sides of the same coin. It also provides support for compositional analyses of semantic pluralisation, according to which predicates originate as singular and are pluralised at a higher derivational level, instead of being “born plural” as in e.g. Krifka (1992), Landman (1996), and Kratzer (2008).

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Dedication v
  3. Table of contents vii
  4. Introduction 1
  5. Chapter 1. Bridging theoretical and experimental linguistic research 9
  6. Data and its use
  7. Chapter 2. Experimental research 23
  8. Chapter 3. Finding long-distance dependencies in the Lassy Corpus 39
  9. Chapter 4. How to compare speed and accuracy of syntactic parsers 57
  10. Chapter 5. Adposition clusters in Dutch 77
  11. Chapter 6. Polarity licensing and intervention by conjunction 93
  12. Chapter 7. Frequential test of (S)OV as unmarked word order in Dutch and German clauses 107
  13. Chapter 8. Kratzer’s effect in the nominal domain 125
  14. Chapter 9. Is bilingual speech production language-specific or non-specific? 139
  15. Chapter 10. Prosody of restrictive and appositive relative clauses in Dutch and German 155
  16. Chapter 11. Licensing distributivity 177
  17. Implementation and theory building
  18. Chapter 12. Extending categorial grammar to phonology 193
  19. Chapter 13. Stacking up for the long way down 207
  20. Chapter 14. Meaning between algebra and culture 227
  21. Chapter 15. Whether you like it or not, this is a paper about or not 249
  22. Chapter 16. Between desire and necessity 263
  23. Chapter 17. Inner aspect and the comparative quantifiers 281
  24. Chapter 18. The expressive en maar -construction 305
  25. Index 327
https://doi.org/10.1075/z.210.11dev

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Dedication v
  3. Table of contents vii
  4. Introduction 1
  5. Chapter 1. Bridging theoretical and experimental linguistic research 9
  6. Data and its use
  7. Chapter 2. Experimental research 23
  8. Chapter 3. Finding long-distance dependencies in the Lassy Corpus 39
  9. Chapter 4. How to compare speed and accuracy of syntactic parsers 57
  10. Chapter 5. Adposition clusters in Dutch 77
  11. Chapter 6. Polarity licensing and intervention by conjunction 93
  12. Chapter 7. Frequential test of (S)OV as unmarked word order in Dutch and German clauses 107
  13. Chapter 8. Kratzer’s effect in the nominal domain 125
  14. Chapter 9. Is bilingual speech production language-specific or non-specific? 139
  15. Chapter 10. Prosody of restrictive and appositive relative clauses in Dutch and German 155
  16. Chapter 11. Licensing distributivity 177
  17. Implementation and theory building
  18. Chapter 12. Extending categorial grammar to phonology 193
  19. Chapter 13. Stacking up for the long way down 207
  20. Chapter 14. Meaning between algebra and culture 227
  21. Chapter 15. Whether you like it or not, this is a paper about or not 249
  22. Chapter 16. Between desire and necessity 263
  23. Chapter 17. Inner aspect and the comparative quantifiers 281
  24. Chapter 18. The expressive en maar -construction 305
  25. Index 327
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