Quantificational Topics: A Scopal Treatment of Exceptional Wide Scope Phenomena (Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy Book 86)

Addressing an issue that has puzzled the linguistics community for many years, this book offers a novel approach to the exceptional wide scope behaviour of indefinites. It is the first book explicitly dedicated to exceptional wide scope phenomena. Its unique approach offers an explanation for the fact that it is only a proper subset of the indefinites that shows this exceptional wide scope behaviour. The author draws a careful distinction between genuine and apparent scope readings, a distinction that is usually not taken care of and has thus led to certain confusions. In particular, it is argued that functional readings have to be kept strictly apart from non-functional ones and that all proposals that use functional mechanisms to explain the phenomena at hand face severe problems. The existing body of literature on the main issues of the book is thoroughly reviewed. This makes the book well suited as background literature for graduate seminars on those topics. Front Matter....Pages I-XI Introduction....Pages 1-17 Topicality....Pages 19-56 Genuine and Apparent Scope Readings....Pages 57-106 Exceptional Wide Scope....Pages 107-185 Semantic Effects of Topicality....Pages 187-211 ExceptionalWide Scope as a Topic Phenomenon....Pages 213-269 Conclusion....Pages 271-279 Back Matter....Pages 281-306