I thought I’d just make a real post in response to Lance’s comment on my last post to clarify on the “fancy generalized quantifier” type (name courtesy of Polly :-P).

[[every boy who left who came before John]] = λE(e,t)[λM(e,t)[ ∀x [(left’(x) & came’(x) & E(x) & boy’(x)) -> M(x)]]]

The idea here is that E is a domain restriction argument, which can be filled either by some contextually salient restriction or by a relative clause (or perhaps other restrictions, such as exceptives).  Kai discusses motivations for domain restrictions in his thesis (in Section 2.2.2) and associates the restriction with the quantifier.  If you pass up that argument to the whole GQ, it gives the relative clause a place to contribute to the whole meaning of the GQ.  (This isn’t a totally new idea; Bach & Cooper 1978 have this extra argument in their approach to relative clauses.)  My idea is that if there is always a domain restriction argument in the GQ, we can have the relative clause fill that spot – but, we’ll need to pass up a new argument slot once we combine the GQ with the RC, not just for stacking but to leave that open for any contextually salient domain restrictions.

emma :: Feb.24.2007 :: misc, semantics, linguistics :: 2 Comments »