The Role of Microvariation in the Study of Semantic Universals: Adverbial Quantifiers in European and Que´bec French  

Oleh:

BURNETT, HEATHER

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Journal of Semantics (Sebagian Full Text) vol. 29 no. 1 (2012), page 1–38.
Fulltext: Burnett_Heather.pdf (279.52KB)

Isi artikel

This paper addresses the question of semantic universals with a particular focus on the limits of cross-linguistic variation in the semantics of lexical expressions. I argue that the variation observed in the semantics of adverbial quantifiers in the quantification at a distance (QAD) construction (e.g. J’ai beaucoup lu de livres) between Standard European French and Que´bec French constitutes an important argument for the existence of polyadicity as a lexical property in natural language. Specifically, I propose that QAD sentences in the European dialect involve an unreducible binary quantifier over Æevent, objectæ pairs and that the same construction in the Canadian dialect involves a unary quantifier over individuals. I argue that the construction has the same syntax in both dialects, and therefore, the variation in the type of quantification should be attributed to variation in the lexical semantics of the adverbial quantifiers of the language.

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