Abstract
Chapter 5 examines the factors that help disambiguating between the three interpretations of indefinites proposed in Chap. 4. Some of these factors are DP-internal properties, e.g., the lexical properties of determiners or the internal structure of indefinite DPs, others are contextual, e.g., syntactic position and information structure. It is shown that whereas certain indefinites, in particular singular indefinites and cardinal indefinites, are ambiguous between a weak and a strong reading, other indefinites can be only weak or only strong. The difference between non quantificational strong and quantificational strong indefinites, on the other hand, is not a matter of ambiguity but rather a matter of indeterminacy, the choice between the two options being determined by the context: only indefinites in Topic positions, as well as indefinites in the subject position of contrastive predicates can be assigned a quantificational representation.
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Notes
- 1.
‘ Certains N suggests some of the Ns but not all of the Ns.’
This is not a logical implication but only an implicature, because it is possible to cancel it by using même ‘even’ and say:
(i)
Certains étudiants sont indisciplinés. Tous même, me semble-t-il.
certain students are undisciplined all even me seems- it
‘Certain students are undisciplined. All of them, even, it seems to me.’
- 2.
The collective meaning is even clearer in the case of the Spanish determiner unos (Villalta 1995).
- 3.
There is however a partitive des, which is interpreted like certains (cf. Bosveld de Smet 1997).
(i)
Des élèves étaient absents hier.
des students were absent yesterday
‘Some students were absent yesterday.’
- 4.
These examples are acceptable with the partitive meaning equivalent to certains. This is expected because the partitive des is quantificational and entity-predicates allow quantificational readings.
- 5.
There are notable differences between languages regarding this point. For example, explicit partitives in Spanish cannot appear in hay ‘there is’ constructions: (i) *habia dos de tus estudiantes en la sala ‘there were two of your students in the room’ vs. (ii) habia dos estudiantes tuyas en la sala ‘there were two students of yours in the room’ (judgments provided by Helena Lopez de Palma, p.c.).
- 6.
Note that a collective interpretation of modified cardinals is related to an eventive interpretation of the sentence, in which the modified cardinal is a weak indefinite:
(i)
Au moins cinq étudiants se sont réunis hier.
at least five students refl are gathered yesterday
‘At least five students have gathered yesterday.’
- 7.
The notion of ‘strong Case’ was used by de Hoop (1992) to refer to prepositional or morphologically marked Accusatives, as opposed to unmarked objects, assumed to be marked with a ‘weak Case’.
- 8.
For a crosslinguistic analysis of specific indefinites, and in particular of prepositional Accusatives, see von Heusinger (2002).
- 9.
Here, we will not be looking at the distribution of prepositional accusatives with pronouns like nimeni ‘nobody’, cineva ‘someone’, etc.
- 10.
The term cross-over refers to the following generalization (cf. Postal 1971; Wasow 1972, 1979): a relative or interrogative pronoun cannot cross (or move past) a pronoun with which it is coindexed. Weak cross-over violations arise in structures where the coindexed pronoun does not c-command the trace left by the movement of the relative pronoun. For example, in *Who i does his i mother love e i , the pronoun his is embedded in the DP his mother and thus does not c-command the trace of who in the object position. Weak cross-over effects are also observed where a pronoun is coindexed with a quantified DP to its right (*his i other loves nobody i). This kind of example is parallel to examples with wh-movement (in relatives or interrogatives) if it is assumed that quantified DPs move at the level of Logical Form.
- 11.
Enç (1991) analyzes morphological accusatives in Turkish as being necessarily partitive. In Romanian as well, prepositional accusatives are partitive in most contexts. However there are examples of Romanian prepositional accusatives that are specific without being partitive.
- 12.
In the words of Bleam (1999:180), who identifies “weak” and “property denoting”: “non-a-marked animate DPs [in Spanish] are interpreted as properties”.
- 13.
- 14.
In Chap. 6 it will be proposed that narrow scoped indefinites that are not weak are to be analyzed as dependent indefinites.
- 15.
- 16.
This is an extension of the generalization proposed by Tasmowski and Laca (2000) for a specific case, that of unos (‘some’, ‘a few’) in Spanish.
- 17.
Regarding the various left peripheral constructions in French see Fradin (1988).
- 18.
Jean-Marie Marandin (2011, personal communication) observes that specificity does play a role in the acceptability of certain examples:
(i)
Un étudiant que je n’avais pas vu depuis 30 ans, je l’ai rencontré hier à l’opéra.
‘A student that I had not seen for 30 years, I met him yesterday at the opera.’
(ii)
Un étudiant à toi, il m’a aidé à porter la table.
‘A student of yours, he helped me with carrying the table.’
(iii)
Un de tes étudiants, je l’ai examiné deux fois.
‘One of your students, I examined him twice.’
According to us, these examples are not fully acceptable (they are clearly degraded compared to (47)). We furthermore believe that the structure of these examples is different from those in (45) and (47). The acceptability of certain examples is ameliorated if the indefinite is modified by a restriction that indicates some relation to the hearer (see (ii) and (iii)). However, these examples are not perfectly acceptable, because the referent of the indefinite itself is not part of the knowledge of the hearer.
- 19.
Besides kinds, ça can refer to propositions, events, or not yet individualized entities but not to individualized or specific entities:
(i) Je ne peux pas croire ça.
I NEG can NEG believe this
‘I cannot believe this.’
(ii) Je ne veux pas que ça m’arrive une nouvelle fois.
I NEG want NEG that this me-happens a new time
‘I don’t want this to happen to me once again’
(iii) *Marie, je ne veux pas que ça vienne me chercher.
Marie I NEG want NEG that this comes me look for
(iv) *Un étudiant à toi, je ne veux pas que ça vienne me chercher.
A student of yours I NEG want NEG that this comes me look for
- 20.
The dislocation of mass DPs proves ungrammatical in (i) and (ii) but this is due to syntactic reasons: en cannot be linked to an empty category in the preverbal subject position. Example (iii) is grammatical, for en is linked to the postverbal position of an impersonal il construction.
(i) *Du caféi ei s’eni est acheté hier. (e = empty category)
‘Sm coffee was bought yesterday.’
(ii) *Du caféi ei eni a été acheté hier.
‘Sm coffee was bought yesterday.’
(iii) *Du caféi, il s’eni est acheté ei hier.
‘Sm coffee, there was some bought yesterday.’
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Dobrovie-Sorin, C., Beyssade, C. (2012). Disambiguating Indefinites. In: Redefining Indefinites. Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, vol 85. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3002-1_5
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