Publication details

When a quantifier is not a quantifier : Non-conservative percentage expressions in German

Investor logo
Authors

GEHRKE Berit WĄGIEL Marcin

Year of publication 2022
Type Article in Proceedings
Conference Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 26
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Arts

Citation
Doi http://dx.doi.org/10.18148/sub/2022.v26i0.1003
Keywords percentages; quantifier; conservativity; modification; definiteness
Description In this paper we discuss percentage expressions of the type ‘fifty percent’ in German and two readings they give rise to, a conservative and a non-conservative one. Based on a questionnaire and a corpus study, we show that the non-conservative reading does not just need a bare, non-genitive-marked nominal to arise, but is also conditioned by word order (it has to appear low) and by the types of predicates that allow for it (in essence, predicates that can be used as existential or HAVE-predicates). We propose an account, under which the percentage expression is a type of scalar modifier that has an apparent effect on the predicate due to semantic incorporation ((in)transitives) and to an existential structure (intransitives).
Related projects:

You are running an old browser version. We recommend updating your browser to its latest version.

More info