Viola Schmitt (Vienna)
Scope-related cumulativity asymmetries and cumulative composition
— joint work with Nina Haslinger —
We propose a novel account of asymmetries concerning cumulative readings of universal quantifiers like every, and related expressions like German sowohl A als auch B. `A as well as B'. Our system avoids some of the problems of existing theories because unlike them it does not rely on syntactically derived cumulative predicates, but is surface compositional: The basic idea is to include pluralities of all semantic types in the ontology and build cumulativity into a composition rule, so that any larger expression containing a plurality-denoting expression will also denote a plurality.