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Quantification, Events, and Gerunds

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Quantification in Natural Languages

Part of the book series: Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy ((SLAP,volume 54))

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Abstract

In this paper I will argue that gerunds are amenable to a treatment that ascribes much of their semantic variability to various quantificational operators that may be present in a sentence. Such an analysis is in the spirit of the theories of indefinites of Kamp (1981) and Heim (1982). We will also be able to develop a new argument in favour of the Kamp/Heim framework, a result which has wider significance for understanding quantification in natural language. Furthermore, the treatment of gerunds requires a theory somewhat different from that needed for indefinites; in this way too we can gain in our study of quantification. Finally, these results are made precise when I put forward an explicit fragment that interprets many Logical Forms containing gerunds.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Georgetown University, USA

    Paul Portner

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  1. Paul Portner
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Massachusetts-Amherst, USA

    Emmon Bach , Angelika Kratzer  & Barbara H. Partee ,  & 

  2. University of Arizona, USA

    Eloise Jelinek

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© 1995 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Portner, P. (1995). Quantification, Events, and Gerunds. In: Bach, E., Jelinek, E., Kratzer, A., Partee, B.H. (eds) Quantification in Natural Languages. Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, vol 54. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2817-1_19

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2817-1_19

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-7923-3129-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-017-2817-1

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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