Quantification in Natural Languages -

. .

Résumé :
This extended collection of papers is the result of putting recent ideas on quantification to work on a wide variety of languages. A central perspective of many of the papers follows the recognition of two broad types of quantificational strategies, one associated with nominal structures and determiners, the other with adverbial and other non-nominal expression (`D-quantifiers' and `A-quantifiers'). The papers demonstrate both the unity and the variety of natural language quantificational forms and meanings. Many of the papers also shed new light on questions of language typology and syntactic and morphological variation. The languages discussed include English, Dutch, Italian, American Sign Language, Hindi, and a number of languages of Australia, Greenland, and the Americas. br/ These comparative studies provide initial data for a typology of quantificational structures in natural languages, with important implications for the study of universal grammar. br/ The book consists of research papers aimed at linguists, philosophers, and psychologists interested in semantics and linguistic form. An introduction presents a sketch of the background of this research and some of the central issues discussed, with pointers toward the included papers. br/

Sommaire:
1. A Note on Qualification and Blankets in Haisla.- 2. On the Absence of Certain Quantifiers in Mohawk.- 3. Quantification in Eskimo: A Challenge for Compositional Semantics.- 4. Remarks on Definiteness in Wartlpiri.- 5. The Variability of Impersonal Subjects.- 6. On Quantifier Strength and Partitive Noun Phrases.- 7. Quantification in Correlatives.- 8. A-Quantifier and Scope in Mayali.- 9. Towards a Typology of Natural Logic.- 10. Universal Quantifiers and Distributivity.- 12. Diachronic Sources 'All' and 'Every'.- 12. Mass and Count Quantifiers.- 13. On the Characterization of the Weak-Strong Distinction.- 14. On the Quantificational Force of English Free Relatives.- 15. Quantification in Straits Salish.- 16. Quantificational Structures and Compositionality.- 17. Bare Noun Phrases, Verbs and Quantification in ASL.- 18. Quantification, Events, and Gerunds.- 19. Domain Restriction in Dynamic Semantics.- 20. The Expression of Quantificational Notions in Asurini do Trocar?: Evidence against the Universality of Determiner Quantification.