CNL Lunch

Martin Hackl

Some Issues in the Semantics and Syntax of Comparatives and Comparative Quantification

Thursday December 7th, 12:30pm, 3416 Marie Mount Hall

Generalized Quantifier Theory maintains that comparative determiners such as more than n are semantically opaque. I.e. the internal composition of comparative determiners is irrelevant for the truth-conditional contribution these determiners have to the sentence they appear in. They might as well be viewed as unanalyzed or idiomatic units. I will challenged this view by pointing out systematic interactions between sub-components of expressions like more than n (such as the numeral n) and the matrix VP. In a second step, I will sketch an analysis of comparative determiners in terms of the independently motivated syntax and semantics of comparative constructions (e.g. John read more books than Bill). This perspectives provides us with the tools to look for additional interactions between components of more than n and material inside as well as outside the DP. I will sketch briefly that these interactions do indeed exist which provides strong support of the proposal to analyze comparative quantifiers as comparative constructions. I will end with a discussion of some of the implications of this view on the theory of quantification in natural language as well as some ideas for experimental work investigating the interface between language (in particular syntax and compositional semantics) and other cognitive faculties (e.g. numerical cognition, measurement and comparisons of degrees, etc.)