Abstract
Unlike run-of-the-mill quantifiers, indefinites can escape islands. Schwarzschild (J Semant 19(3):289–314, 2002) connects this behavior with domain restriction: On his analysis, indefinites are existential quantifiers that get apparent exceptional scope when their domain is restricted to a singleton. The Spanish indefinites un and algún provide an ideal testing ground for Schwarzschild’s theory. Since un can be a singleton indefinite but algún cannot (Alonso-Ovalle and Menéndez-Benito, Nat Lang Semant 18(1): 1–31, 2010, (2008b) Minimal domain widening. In: Abner N, Bishop J (eds) Proceedings of the 27th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics. Cascadilla Proceedings Project, Somerville, MA, pp 36–44), we only expect un to have exceptional scope. This chapter tests this prediction experimentally by looking at the behavior of these indefinites in relative clauses and the antecedent of conditionals. The results yield a modulation of the predicted pattern: (1) In relative clauses, un can have exceptional scope, but exceptional scope is also available for algún to some extent; (2) in conditionals, exceptional scope is impossible for algún and hard for un. This difference between the two types of islands is puzzling for most theories of indefinites. We put forward an account cast within Kratzer and Shimoyama’s ((2002) Indeterminate pronouns: the view from Japanese. In: Otsu Y (ed) Proceedings of the 3rd Tokyo conference on psycholinguistics, pp 1–25) Hamblin semantics, on which indefinites denote sets of alternatives that expand until they meet an appropriate operator. Under this account, the differences between the two islands come about through the interplay of the alternatives introduced by the indefinite and the operators associated with each syntactic configuration.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
See, for instance, Matthewson (1999) on Lilloet Salish; Farkas (2000) on Romanian; Yanovich (2005) and Ionin (this volume) on Russian; Lin (2004) and Kim (2004) on Mandarin Chinese; Martí (2007) on Spanish; Ebert et al. (this volume) on German ein gewiss vs. ein bestimmt; Martin (this volume), Jayez and Tovena (2002), and Jayez and Tovena (2006) on French; and Yanovich (this volume) on a certain.
- 3.
- 4.
See Frazier and Bader (2007) for an overview of previous psycholinguistic studies on quantifier scope.
- 5.
In this connection, see Zamparelli (2007), who claims that Italian qualche, a domain widener, cannot escape out of islands.
- 6.
- 7.
- 8.
Schwarzschild’s theory also covers cases of exceptional scope where the indefinite scopes out of a scope island but underneath a higher quantifier (“intermediate readings”). In what follows, we will leave those readings aside. We will briefly come back to them in Sect. 6.3.
- 9.
Note that the relative clauses in these examples are restrictive (Schwarz et al., forthcoming). First, there is no intonational break, unlike the case of nonrestrictive clauses. Second, unlike nonrestrictive relative clauses, the relative clauses in these examples do not have to be speaker oriented (Potts, 2003), as shown by the example below.
Note also that while in these examples the domain of un is a singleton, un cannot combine with nouns whose extension is known to be a singleton, as illustrated below (Heim, 1991; Percus, 2006). The contrast between the sentences below is explored in Schwarz et al. (forthcoming).
- 10.
The definition of an antisingleton subset selection function is based upon the definition of a singleton subset selection function presented in von Fintel (1999). Of course, other domain constraints may be possible. For instance, certain indefinites have been argued to widen the domain (Kadmon and Landman, 1993; Kratzer, 2003; Chierchia, 2006). Domain widening would correspond to the requirement that f be interpreted as an identity function. For the sake of concreteness, we are assuming that the antisingleton constraint is a presupposition on the value of the subset selection function. The function in (10a) is partial. Following the notation in Heim and Kratzer (1998), the expression right before the colon indicates the definedness condition.
- 11.
The complete list of experimental items is available upon request.
- 12.
The partitive versions were included to determine whether partitivity had an effect on the availability of exceptional scope—Frazier and Bader (2007) found that partitive complements may facilitate specific interpretations. However, partitivity was not found to be relevant and will be ignored in the remainder of this chapter.
- 13.
This was done to give the wide-scope reading all the chances possible, since bound variable pronouns have been argued to facilitate exceptional scope (see Kratzer (1998)).
- 14.
An analysis of variance (ANOVA) test looking at both experiments together revealed a significant main effect of un vs. algún (F1(1,23) = 59.213, p < 0.001, F2(1,22) = 102.859, p < 0.001 ), a significant main effect of syntactic environments (conditionals vs. relative clauses) (F1(1,23) = 49.286, p < 0.001, F2(1,22) = 101.669, p < 0.001), and a significant interaction (F1(1,23) = 6.273, p < 0.05, F2(1,22) = 11.017, p < 0.01 ). Of course, the by-items analysis is of limited use here, since the items where not minimal variants of one another.
- 15.
Martí (2007) argues that the scope of algunos, the plural version of algún, is constrained by a wide range of syntactic islands. Interestingly, the data she presents suggests that wide-scope readings might be harder for algunos in conditionals. This could reflect the same type of pattern that we find for algún. Similarly, Ionin (2010b) presents the results of an experiment that tests the availability of narrow, intermediate, and widest possible scope for a certain and a indefinites in relative clauses and conditionals, and reports that there are numerically more acceptances of widest-scope readings of a-indefinites out of relative clauses than out of conditionals (although the difference was not replicated in the case of intermediate scope readings).
- 16.
- 17.
For concreteness, we will assume that the subset selection function is syntactically represented, the way the C variable used to account for quantifier restrictions is often assumed to be (see, for instance, von Fintel, 1994).
- 18.
- 19.
We are making what Lewis calls “The Limit Assumption” (Lewis, 1973), namely, that given a proposition p, there will always be a non-empty set of worlds in which p is true that come as close as possible to the world of evaluation. Ties in similarity are allowed. For a survey of the different flavors a minimal change semantics might come in, see Nute (1984).
- 20.
The problem also arises with might counterfactuals and, in general, with other conditionals for which an ordering semantics is assumed (a downward monotone analysis licenses the inference from (p ∨ q) → r to p → r and q → r), but see Alonso-Ovalle (2006) for reasons to believe that the inference we are after is not a downward entailing inference.
- 21.
Assume that the CP and the IP combine once the free variable in the IP is abstracted over.
- 22.
For ease of exposition, we assume that the lambda abstraction is represented at LF by means of an index, as in Heim and Kratzer (1998).
- 23.
This means, under our assumptions, that the value of the subset selection function variable introduced by algún is the identity function.
- 24.
An anonymous reviewer points out that the English counterpart of (38b) with any can be naturally read as quantifying over those articles of Juan that he published in a foreign journal.
- 25.
Thanks to Maribel Romero (p.c.) for bringing this point to our attention.
- 26.
Of course, a process of free existential closure has been proposed before. See, for instance, Reinhart (1997).
- 27.
Maribel Romero (p.c.) suggests that different islands might treat the alternatives introduced by disjunction differently: As we saw in connection with example (43), a complex-NP island simply lets alternatives pass. In contrast, wh-islands seem to stop them, as in (i), from Larson (1985, 245). Larson judges the reading in (ii) as “at best quite marginal”:
- 28.
Alonso-Ovalle and Menéndez-Benito (2010) analyze this ignorance component as a conversational implicature derived by the antisingleton constraint imposed by algún.
- 29.
Thanks to Maribel Romero (p.c.) for making this suggestion and sharing her intuition about the context below.
- 30.
As in experiment 1, each sentence was preceded by a paragraph describing a situation forcing the intermediate scope reading of the sentence (the reading under which the indefinite is interpreted scoping under the subject quantifier but over the universal quantifier in object position). As above, each context was followed by a question asking subjects whether the target sentence was an appropriate description of the scenario.
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Acknowledgements
For their invaluable help with this project, we would like to thank Leopoldo Abad Alcalá, Jan Anderssen, Ana Arregui, Sandra Barriales, Patrick Brand, Rajesh Bhatt, Manuel Carreiras, Francisco Conde, Kai von Fintel, Lyn Frazier, Danny Fox, Valentine Hacquard, Susana Huidobro, Jonah Katz, Angelika Kratzer, Helen Majewski, Norberto Moreno, Manolo Perea, Maribel Romero, Florian Schwarz, Anne-Michelle Tessier, and audiences at the workshop on ‘Funny Indefinites’ held in ZAS, Berlin, on July 6–7 2007, and at WCCFL 2008. We are also very grateful to an anonymous reviewer for insightful comments and helpful suggestions and to Stefan Hinterwimmer and Cornelia Ebert for their careful editorial work. Of course, all errors are our own. Our names are listed in alphabetical order.
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Alonso-Ovalle, L., Menéndez-Benito, P. (2013). Exceptional Scope: The Case of Spanish. In: Ebert, C., Hinterwimmer, S. (eds) Different Kinds of Specificity Across Languages. Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, vol 92. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5310-5_6
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