1 Parallel Scope An Entailment Account of Scope Parallelism Seungwan Ha.pdf

To appear in the proceedings of Western Conference on Linguistics (2006) An Entailment Account of Scope Parallelism Seungwan Ha Boston University 1 Parallel Scope When a sentence contains more than two quantifiers, it becomes ambiguous. For example, in (1a), the existential quantifier can take narrow or wide scope, compared to the universal quantifier by quantifier raising, so that (1a) yields scope ambiguity. On the other hand, (1b) is not ambiguous since there exists only one quantifier in a sentence. (1) a. A girl loves every professor. (? ?, ? ?) b. Mary loves every professor. (Not ambiguous) The availability of quantifier movement has been generalized by Fox (1995, 2000), where he argues that Quantifier Raising (or Lowering) occurs only if it has a semantic effect (i.e. Scope Economy). Therefore, in (2b), quantifier can be reconstructed to its original position since it would affect the existential quantifier take narrow scope, compared to the universal quantifier. (2) a. [TP A girli [vP every professorj [ti loves tj]]]. b. [TP A girl [vP every professorj [a girl loves tj]]]. √ Scope Economy In (3), the QR of the universal quantifier does not have any semantic effect, so it is blocked by Scope Economy. Thus, only surface scope is available in (1b). (3) *[TP every professor [TP Mary loves every professor.]] *Scope Economy Fox (2000) lists some examples that are scopally informative and uninformative in (4-5). (4) Scopally uninformative a. The person who produced the film festival admires every movie. b. John and Bill like every teacher. (Fox 2000: 41) (5) Scopally informative a. An American flag is in front of many buildings. b. John or Bill likes every teacher. (Fox 2000: 41) A great amount of attention has been paid to scope ambiguity in the ellipsis contexts since Sag (1976) and Williams (1977). Sag (1976) and Williams (1977) di