Composing reciprocity: An analysis of scattered reciprocal

Scattered reciprocals (SRs) are Brazilian Portuguese constructions built from two discontinuous phrases which can offer a new window into the issue of the building blocks of reciprocity. By investigating how reciprocity is compositionally built in sentences with SRs, a puzzle emerges: SRs can apparently take split scope around other quantifiers, but only if these quantifiers are pronounced in a position outside of the reciprocal's scope domain. I argue that these are only apparent cases of split scope and, building on Murray (2008) and Dotlačil (2012), I propose a decompositional account of reciprocals which is formalized in Champollion, Bledin & Li's (2017) Plural Predicate Logic, a static logic which makes use of sets of assignment functions to model plurals. The resulting analysis allows us to view SRs and reciprocal pronouns like each other as being built from the same pieces, with the only difference between them being in how they are syntactically built.

Negative Quantifiers

This chapter discusses two puzzling phenomena in the domain of negative quantifiers: the so-called nall-problem and the existence of split-scope readings triggered by negative indefinites. The nall-problem concerns the fact that no language in the world lexicalizes negated universal quantifiers (with the meaning ‘not every’) and other negated high-scale elements. Negative Indefinites in languages such as Dutch and German may give rise to so-called split scope readings. Sentences like German Du must keine Krawatte anziehen (‘you must wear no tie’) have a reading where the modal takes scope in between the negation and the indefinite. That suggests that prima facie negative indefinites are not negative quantifiers in a straightforward sense. This chapter briefly discusses and evaluates the main analyses that have been put forward to account for these puzzles.

A Typological Approach to the Split Scope Readings of Negative Indefinites

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