Category: General

SynSem 01/11 – Peter Jenks (UCB)

Published: January 11, 2013

We will have Pere Jenks from UCB this week in the first SynSem of Winter Quarter.

Speaker: Peter Jenks (UCB)
Date/Time: Friday, January 11, 2-4pm
Location: Campbell 2122
Title: Quantifier Float and Scope in Thai
Contact: Dominique Sportiche

Abstract:

In this paper I present an analysis of quantifier float (Q-float) in Thai as overt Quantifier Raising (QR). I show that the position of floated object quantifiers in Thai cannot be identified with A-traces of overt arguments, militating against an analysis in terms of stranding (e.g. Sportiche 1988, Miyagawa 1989). At the same time, Thai Q-float is subject to scope and locality restrictions of floated quantifiers, facts which I take to be problematic for a purely adverbial analysis. In light of these difficulties, I propose that Thai Q-float is QR, taken to be A-scrambling of a quantifier to a projection of VP (Johnson and Tomioka 1997). Q-float itself is argued to result from scattered deletion of the moved quantifier, where the pronunciation of the quantifier in the floated position is focus-driven, a claim which is supported by evidence from ellipsis and intervention effects.