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Floating quantifiers are interesting in that they are able to change their position within a sentence without changing the meaning of that sentence, or so that is the assumption of the leading theories of Dominique Sportiche (1988) and others.
| 1) |
a. |
All the students have finished the assignment. |
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b. |
The students have all finished the assignment. |
These examples, while different in the position of "all" (the floating quantifier), are identical in meaning.However, in my research I have discovered data that show an alternation of the meaning of a sentence after the quantifier "floated." The data taken into account by Sportiche and others does not consider cases in which the determiner phrase consists of a conjoined noun phrase as in (2).
| 2) |
a. |
All tigers, dogs and alligators have sharp teeth. |
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b. |
Tigers, dogs and alligators all have sharp teeth. |
In addition, whether a definite article precedes the noun phrase plays an important role. In this presentation I will discuss the findings of my study on floating quantifiers with respect to the problems traced above. After outlining my data and establishing its relevance to current linguistic theories, I will consider a number of possible analyses of the data and show their strengths and weaknesses. |
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