The scope of nominal quantifiers in comparative clauses

Numeral semantics

“…It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss the fine details of this generalization. (See Nouwen and Dotlačil (2017) for recent discussion on differences in degree‐related scope between nominals and modals.) For the current purposes, it suffices to notice that (42) raises the question why we would observe a degree‐oriented constraint like this for numerals.…”

Introduction

“…One type of solution to this problem involves various devices that give the quantifier internal to the than-clause wide scope without actually removing it from the than-clause (Larson 1988, Fleisher 2016, Nouwen & Dotlačil 2017. Nicholas Fleisher's contribution to the present volume, which analyses the effect as a kind of pair list reading (and than-clauses as a kind of question) is an example of this approach.…”

“…Chierchia (1992) and others argue that the attested reading of embedded questions with quantifiers is a pair-list reading (a pairing of girls and their heights representing what John knows). Fleisher shows how pair list readings can be generated for than clauses containing quantifiers on the model of Chierchia's approach to embedded questions in combination with Nouwen and Dotlačil's (2017) claim that the quantifier has wide scope within the than-clause. He also shows that of two other readings for embedded questions, one, the single-point reading that presupposes, in the example above, that all the girls have the same height, carries over to than-clauses, though the reading is inconspicuous for pragmatic reasons.…”

Than clauses as embedded questions

“…It is important to choose an example in which the surface-scope and inverse-scope readings are truth-conditionally distinct; the non-monotone differential in (7) ensures this Larson (1988). andNouwen & Dotlačil (2017) argue against the availability of scope inversion in clausal comparatives, but their examples involve a silent UE differential, which neutralizes the scopal contrast. For example, in Some boy is taller than every girl is, if every girl g is such that some boy is taller than g is (an inverse-scope reading), then there is some boy who is taller than even the tallest girl; but these are just the truth conditions of the surface-scope reading.…”