Number-neutral bare plurals and the multiplicity implicature
Number-neutral bare plurals and the multiplicity implicature
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数中性的裸复数和多重含义
DOI：
10.1007/s10988-009-9064-3
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发表时间：
2009
影响因子：
1.1
通讯作者：
E. Zweig
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
E. Zweig
裸复数（狗）的行为方式与量化复数（某些狗）不同。例如，虽然“约翰拥有狗”这句话暗示约翰拥有不止一只狗，但其否定句“约翰不拥有狗”并不意味着“约翰不拥有多于一只狗”，而是“约翰不拥有一只狗”。第二个令人费解的行为被称为依赖复数阅读。当在另一个复数的范围内时，复数的“多个”含义不分布，但复数的存在力量分布。例如，“我的朋友上好学校”要求我的每个朋友上一所好学校，而不是更多，而如果我所有的朋友都上同一所学校，则不合适。本文表明，这些现象以及其他现象都是由同一原因引起的。也就是说，复数名词本身并不断言“多个”，而是复数表示一个数字中性的谓词（未指定基数）。 “多个”含义作为标量含义出现，依赖于裸复数与其单数替代之间的标量关系，并在子句域中计算；即，在事件变量的存在闭包之前。最后，我们将讨论该分析对与裸复数相互作用的量化名词短语的分析的影响，例如不定数 DP（三个男孩）和单数共相（每个男孩）。
Bare plurals (dogs) behave in ways that quantified plurals (some dogs) do not. For instance, while the sentence John owns dogs implies that John owns more than one dog, its negation John does not own dogs does not mean “John does not own more than one dog”, but rather “John does not own a dog”. A second puzzling behavior is known as the dependent plural reading; when in the scope of another plural, the ‘more than one’ meaning of the plural is not distributed over, but the existential force of the plural is. For example, My friends attend good schools requires that each of my friends attend one good school, not more, while at the same time being inappropriate if all my friends attend the same school. This paper shows that both these phenomena, and others, arise from the same cause. Namely, the plural noun itself does not assert ‘more than one’, but rather the plural denotes a predicate that is number neutral (unspecified for cardinality). The ‘more than one’ meaning arises as an scalar implicature, relying on the scalar relationship between the bare plural and its singular alternative, and calculated in a sub-sentential domain; namely, before existential closure of the event variable. Finally, implications of this analysis will be discussed for the analysis of the quantified noun phrases that interact with bare plurals, such as indefinite numeral DPs (three boys), and singular universals (every boy).