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Auteur: Genoveva PUSKAS

Titre:
On Floating Quantifiers (again)


Abstract/Résumé: Whereas canonical quantification is usually considered to involve (some version) of QR, Floating Quantification is analyzed as either involving some adverbial type of quantification or, as is generally assumed for e.g. French, as stranding of the restriction by movement, away from a quantifier sitting in its merging position. And although the literature abounds in discussion and evidenced arguments for the movement which strands the restriction away from the quantifier, little attention has been paid to the motivations for such a movement. Essentially, the question which needs to be answered is why languages which exhibit floating quantification also have canonical quantification. This paper (re-)explores floating quantification, taking as the starting point of the inquiry the Minimalist assumption that displacement is motivated by interpretation, that is, the need to signal semantic relations. It is proposed not only that FQ is motivated by discourse functions such as Focus and Contrastive Topic, but also that both the restriction and the quantifier undergo movement.