Quantificational Modification: The Semantics of Totality and ProportionalityThe thesis explores the syntactic and semantic dimensions of four linguistic elements that appear in Modern Greek arguably as quantifiers and modifiers, i.e., in the form of Quantificational Modifiers (QMods) olos 'all, whole, overall' and its extension olikos 'total', merikos 'some, a few, partial', ligos 'some, few, little, insignificant' and polis 'many, great, considerable'. Such QMods are analyzed as 'measure' quantifiers of scalar semantics that appear in a syntactic position common to adjectival modifiers. The thesis explores specific sets of reading and their interpretations. Such a phenomenon is common to Modern Greek, English, French and Arabic QMods and gives evidence to the universality of Quantificational Modification. Chapter 1 discusses Quantification as semantic interpretation along with the main questions this research intends to answer, while Chapter 2 reviews recent literature on Quantification within and across languages. Chapter 3 focuses on Modern Greek expressions of Quantification and extends chapter 2 into a further discussion about the various syntactic manifestations. Chapters 4 and 5 are extensions to chapters 2 and 3 as they discuss the semantics of specific QMods as 'total' and 'partial' quantifiers, which operate on homomorphic sets of degrees and amounts. Chapter 6 discusses the broader issues in the thesis from a theoretical and typological perspective that establishes Quantificational Modification as a universal and purely semantic subclass of Quantification. Our findings are summarized in chapter 7, followed by suggestions for expanding our investigation into other related areas. |
Contents
Quantification in Modern Greek | 33 |
Quantificational Modification in Natural Language | 59 |
Quantificational Modification and Modern Greek 5 0 Introduction | 72 |
Dposition | 79 |
Theoretical and typological considerations | 93 |
Common terms and phrases
3rd pl 3rd sg adjectival constructions adjectival position adverbial Alexiadou analyzed apple Babiniotis Bach Barwise and Cooper chapter city of London city was destroyed Classical Greek combine D-position D-quantifiers degree of destruction denote destruction inflicted determiner discussed Doetjes domain English event nominal examples expressions of Totality fitites function Giannakidou gradable adjectives grammaticalized Greek olos Haspelmath 1995 homomorphic irthan John katastasi kathe kokkina lexical ligos and polis linguistic MASC mass entities mass nouns meaning mereological sets merikos Modern Greek Modern Greek QMods morpho-syntactic natural languages noun phrases oliki olikos olokliros ousia Partee partial destruction party perisoteri polis and ligos polli polysemous predicate prefix quantificational expressions quantificational interpretation Quantificational Modification refer scalar semantic analysis semantic interpretation sentence similar subsection syntactic constructions syntactic manifestations syntactic position syntax tall the+ thesis total and partial total destruction Totality and Proportionality universal quantifier verb whole