Why "a few" and why not *"a many"?
- The expressions few and a few are typically considered to be separate quantifiers. I challenge this assumption, showing that with the appropriate definition of few, a few can be derived compositionally as a + few. The core of the analysis is a proposal that few has a denotation as a one-place predicate which incorporates a negation operator. From this, argument interpretations can be derived for expressions such as few students and a few students, differing only in the scope of negation. I show that this approach adequately captures the interpretive differences between few and a few. I further show that other such pairs are blocked by a constraint against the vacuous application of a.
| Author: | Stephanie Solt |
|---|---|
| URN: | urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-309830 |
| URL: | http://www.zas.gwz-berlin.de/188.html |
| ISSN: | 1435-9588 |
| ISSN: | 0947-7055 |
| Parent Title (English): | Proceedings of the Sinn und Bedeutung 10 : 10th annual meeting of the Gesellschaft für Semantik, October 13 - 15, 2005, Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Berlin; ZASPil Vol. 44 |
| Publisher: | Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung |
| Place of publication: | Berlin |
| Document Type: | Part of a Book |
| Language: | English |
| Year of Completion: | 2006 |
| Year of first Publication: | 2006 |
| Publishing Institution: | Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg |
| Release Date: | 2013/11/14 |
| GND Keyword: | Lexikologie; Formale Semantik; Quantor; Englisch |
| Volume: | 44 |
| Page Number: | 14 |
| First Page: | 333 |
| Last Page: | 346 |
| HeBIS-PPN: | 378088823 |
| Dewey Decimal Classification: | 4 Sprache / 42 Englisch, Altenglisch / 420 Englisch, Altenglisch |
| Sammlungen: | Linguistik |
| Linguistik-Klassifikation: | Linguistik-Klassifikation: Semantik / Semantics |
| Linguistik-Klassifikation: Lexikologie/Etymologie / Lexicology/Etymology | |
| Zeitschriften / Jahresberichte: | ZAS papers in linguistics : ZASPiL / ZASPiL 44 = Proceedings of the Sinn und Bedeutung 10 |
| : | urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-306872 |
| Licence (German): |  Deutsches Urheberrecht |
