Floating Quantifiers and Lexical Specification of Quantifier Retrieval
Eun‐Jung Yoo · Waseda University Repository (Waseda University) · 2001
Floating quantifiers (FQs) in English exhibit both universal and language-specific properties, and this paper shows that such syntactic and semantic characteristics can be explained in terms of a constraint-based, lexical approach to the construction within the framework of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG). Based on the assumption that FQs are base-generated VP modifiers, this paper proposes an account in which the semantic contribution of FQs consists of a "lexically retrieved " universal quantifier taking scope over the VP meaning. 1