Filtern
Erscheinungsjahr
- 2006 (1)
Dokumenttyp
- Teil eines Buches (Kapitel) (1) (entfernen)
Sprache
- Englisch (1)
Volltext vorhanden
- ja (1) (entfernen)
Gehört zur Bibliographie
- nein (1)
Schlagworte
- Thema-Rhema-Gliederung (1) (entfernen)
This paper looks at sentences with "quantificational indefinites," discussed by Diesing (1992) and others. I propose that these sentences generate sets of alternatives of the form {p, not p and it's possible that p}, which restrict the quantification by an extension of familiar focus principles. For example, in the sentence "I usually read a book about slugs" (on the relevant reading), "usually" quantifies over pairs <x,t> such that x is a book about slugs, t is a time interval, and one alternative is true from the set {I read x at t, I can but do not read x at t}. In addition to accounting for a well-known contrast between creation and non-creation verbs, this also explains a second contrast that Diesing’s analysis cannot account for.