We have seen that noun phrases can refer to individuals and that they can also function as predicates. Certain noun phrases, called quantifiers– like nobody,everyone,some dogs,three or four stones,much of the water on earth,most Dutch people,many young animals – can function syntactically as arguments (subjects, objects, and so forth) but they do not refer to particular objects or individuals. This is obvious in the case of nobody, but it applies to the others as well. When you talk about some dogs, you’re not talking about any particular group of dogs you could walk over to and touch (for that meaning, you would use those dogsorthe dogs). Rather, quantifiers are used to create sentences which say something about the quantities (numbers or amounts) of things. For example, the following sentence says that the number of mammals with fur is greater than the number of mammals without fur.
(16) Most mammals have fur.
To understand how the meaning of a sentence with a quantifier is built up compositionally, we can think of the sentence as divided into three parts. Quantifiers are typically noun phrases which contain a deter- miner. The determiner is “Part 1,” and the rest of the noun phrase, called the restrictor,is “Part 2.” Together, the determiner and restrictor form the quantifier. “Part 3,” called the scope,is the remainder of the sentence:
Events and thematic roles The concept of event also can clarify the meanings of the- matic roles. For example, Susan is the agent in Susan threw the ball.
What is it to be the agent here? Susan is the agent because she is responsible for the event taking place. Without her, there would be no throwing. The ball is the patient of the sentence, and this is due to its role in the event as well. The ball is the patient because it is acted upon, and moves, as part of this event.
As an exercise, consider how the notion of event can clarify other thematic roles, such as goal, location, and instrument.
The restrictor and scope are predicates, describing sets of things. Part 1, the determiner, indicates a relationship between the things described by the restrictor and those described by the scope, and the relationship always has to do with quantities. For example, in (16) mostsays that the number of things which are described by both the restrictor and the scope is greater than the number of things described by the restrictor but not the scope.
The term “scope” is not used solely in connection with quantification;
it refers generally to the part of a sentence over which some word or phrase has a semantic effect. The examples in (17) show that scope is rele- vant to the meaning of phrases with adjectives:
(17) a. old fake [gun]
b. fake [old gun]
The scope of fakeis indicated by brackets, and the difference in meaning between (17a) and (17b) is due to the fact that the scope of fakeis gunin the first example and old gunin the second. Therefore, in (17a) we are talking about an old thing which is designed to look like a gun, but which is not actually a gun. In (17b) we are talking about a thing which is designed to look like an old gun but isn’t an old gun; though it might be a gun, if so it isn’t an old one.
Box 4.2 Scope ambiguity
If a sentence contains more than one scope-bearing element, some- times there will be a scope ambiguity, depending on which of the two is interpreted as inside the scope of the other. Consider the two meanings of the following sentence:
I showed one bagel to every student.
The first meaning involves just one bagel: I showed this same bagel to student 1, student 2, and so on. The second meaning involves at least as many bagels as students: I showed bagel 1 to student 1, bagel 2 to student 2, and so on. In order to understand the meaning of this sen- tence, we have to identify the restrictor and the scope for each quanti- fier. Because there are two quantifiers, there are two possible ways of dividing the sentence up depending on which quantifier we assume is more important. If we assume one bagel is more important, we get the following diagram, where the other quantifier, every student, becomes part of one bagel’s scope:
Most Part 1 determiner
mammals Part 2 restrictor
have fur.
Part 3 scope
We say that one bagelhas wide scope and every student has narrow scope.
This diagram represents the idea that one bagelcomes “first” in the interpretation (or has “priority”), while every studentcomes second, and it corresponds to a meaning like this: “You can find one bagel of which the following is true: I showed it to every student.” It is common with- in syntax and semantics to indicate the scope of quantifiers using phrase structure trees. This can’t be done based on the surface struc- ture, but it can be if all of the quantifiers are moved to the beginning of the sentence:
(For simplicity, a lot of detail has been left out of this tree, including all the labels for the nodes and the internal structure of “I showed t1to t2.”) A phrase structure tree indicating the scopes of all the quantifiers and other aspects of meaning is known as the sentence’s Logical Form (or LF).
Scope ambiguity can be a source of humor, as in the following eval- uation of a candidate not worthy of promotion: “I can assure you that no person would be better for the job.” And this line from Jane Wagner’s play The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe: “All my life I’ve always wanted to besomebody. But I see now I should have been more specific.” (Both examples are from linguist Beatrice Santorini, http://www. ling.upenn.edu/beatrice/humor/contents.html.)
one Det
bagel Restr.
every Det
student Restr.
I showed Scope
to
Scope
Not all quantifiers are noun phrases. For example, adverbial quantifiers like alwayscan quantify over times, as in the following:
(18) John is always ready to help.
Sentence (18) means something like “At all (relevant) times, John is ready to help.” Quantifying over times is not the only function of quantifiers of
Scope of NP1
Scope of NP2
one bagel every I showed t1 to t2
NP1 NP2
student
this type (contrary to what most people think at first). Examples like the following show this (Geach 1962):
(19) If a farmer owns a donkey, he always beats it.
This sentence does not mean that farmers who own donkeys are beating their donkeys all the time. Rather, it means that every farmer beats all of the donkeys he owns. In this example, alwaysquantifies over farmers and donkeys, not times. Quantifiers are a complex topic and the subject of much research by linguists.