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Logic, Language and Meaning pp 213–222Cite as

Cumulative Readings of Every Do Not Provide Evidence for Events and Thematic Roles

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 6042))

Abstract

An argument by Kratzer (2000) based on Schein (1986, 1993) does not conclusively show that events and thematic roles are necessary ingredients of the logical representation of natural language sentences. The argument claims that cumulative readings of every can be represented only with these ingredients. But scope-splitting accounts make it possible to represent cumulative readings of every in an eventless framework. Such accounts are motivated by obligatory reconstruction effects of every and by crosslinguistic considerations. Kratzer proposes that agent but not theme occurs in the logical representation of sentences because this allows her to model subject-object asymmetries in the distribution of cumulative every. But the reason for these asymmetries seems to be that every must be c-commanded by another quantifier in order to cumulate with it, no matter what its thematic role is. So the distribution of cumulative every does not provide support for Kratzer’s proposal.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania, 619 Williams Hall, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States

    Lucas Champollion

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  1. Lucas Champollion
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy (ILLC), University of Amsterdam, Science Park 904, 1098 XH, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Maria Aloni , Harald Bastiaanse , Tikitu de Jager  & Katrin Schulz , ,  & 

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Champollion, L. (2010). Cumulative Readings of Every Do Not Provide Evidence for Events and Thematic Roles. In: Aloni, M., Bastiaanse, H., de Jager, T., Schulz, K. (eds) Logic, Language and Meaning. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 6042. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-14287-1_22

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-14287-1_22

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-14286-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-14287-1

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