'Only' and association with negative antonyms

A problem is detected in how only, traditionally viewed, associates with Negative Quantifiers (NQs) like few, [at most n], and [less than n]. The predicted meanings, which negate the stronger alternatives of the relevant NQs, is shown to be incorrect. The attested meanings are shown to be truth-conditionally equivalent to the result of removing only, hence giving the illusion that only is vacuous. It is further observed that, given an NQ, sentences where only appears to be vacuous become ungrammatical when the NQ is replaced with its positive counterpart. I argue for a view that relates the two phenomena: the ungrammaticality of the only-positive cases explains the unavailability of the predicted meanings in only-negative cases. The attested readings for the negatives, where only appears to be vacuous, is derived from LFs that feature a silent existential quantifier above the NQ. Thesis supervisor:

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2013

Author dc:creator

• Al Khatib, Sam (Samer)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Irene Heim and Martin Hackl.

• Linguistics and Philosophy.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/84414

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/84414