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Quantificational Arguments in Temporal Adjunct Clauses

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Abstract

Quantificational arguments can take scope outside of temporal adjunct clauses, in an apparent violation of locality restrictions: the sentence few secretaries cried after each executive resigned allows the quantificational NP each executive to take scope above few secretaries. I show how this scope relation is the result of local operations: the adjunct clause is a temporal generalized quantifier which takes scope over the main clause (Pratt and Francez, Linguistic and Philosophy 24(2), 187–222. [2001]), and within the adjunct clause, the quantificational argument takes scope above the implicit determiner which forms the temporal generalized quantifier. The paper explores various relations among quantificational arguments across clause boundaries, including temporal clauses that are modified internally by a temporal adverbial and temporal clauses with embedded sentential complements.

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  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, CO4 3SQ, UK

    Ron Artstein

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Artstein, R. Quantificational Arguments in Temporal Adjunct Clauses. Linguist Philos 28, 541–597 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-005-6921-6

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