Scope Ambiguities with Negative Quantifiers

Abstract

Jacobs (1980,1991) and Rullmann (1995) claim that lexical decomposition of the German determiner kein ‘no’ and its Dutch counterpart geen ‘no’ is necessary to account for readings in which a scope-bearing operator such as an intensional verb or a universal quantifier intervenes between the negation and the existential quantifier part of the determiner. In this paper, I argue that lexical decomposition is not only undesirable, but empirically incorrect. As an alternative, I develop a higher-order interpretation of negative quantifiers in terms of quantification over properties. The analysis is built on the observation that split readings are restricted to monotone decreasing NPs in predicative positions.

I wish to thank Cleo Condoravdi, Paul Dekker, Donka Farkas, Manfred Krifka, Hotze Rullmann, Ivan Sag, Ede Zimmermann, and the participants of the semantics workshop at Stanford and the workshop on reference and anaphorical relations at Konstanz for helpful comments and suggestions.