Mojmír Dočekal & Iveta Šafratová (Masaryk University)
*swarms* and degrees -- 3 experiments on Slavic *swarm* constructions
Our talk reports results of three experiments concerning swarm constructions (prototypical English examples of A-/L-swarm sentences are *Termites are swarming in my kitchen*/*My kitchen is swarming with termites*) in Czech and Slovak. The results of the experiments confirm some of the Hoeksema's (2009, 2018) claims describing L-swarms as causative degree constructions. The experiments also bring new evidence about the type of scales encoded by L-swarms. Next, Slavic data also show the pluractional nature of A-swarms on top of which L-swarms add the scalar semantics. Finally, the results of the experiments falsify some of the previous claims about the positive polarity properties of L-swarms.