Full Description
This work presents the structure, distribution and semantic interpretation of quantificational expressions in languages from diverse language families and typological profiles. The current volume pays special attention to underrepresented languages of different status and endangerment level. Languages covered include American and Russian Sign Languages, and sixteen spoken languages from Africa, Australia, Papua, the Americas, and different parts of Asia. The articles respond to a questionnaire the editors constructed to enable detailed crosslinguistic comparison of numerous features. They offer comparable information on semantic classes of quantifiers (generalized existential, generalized universal, proportional, partitive), syntactically complex quantifiers (intensive modification, Boolean compounds, exception phrases, etc.), and several more specific issues such as quantifier scope ambiguities, floating quantifiers, and binary (type 2) quantifiers. The book is intended for semanticists, logicians interested in quantification in natural language, and general linguists as articles are meant to be descriptive and theory independent. The book continues and expands the coverage of the Handbook of Quantifiers in Natural Language (2012) by the same editors, and extends the earlier work in Matthewson (2008), Gil et al. (2013) and Bach et al (1995).
Contents
Introduction by Edward L. Keenan, D. Paperno.- The Quantifier Questionnaire by Edward L. Keenan.- Quantification in American Sign Language by Natasha Abner, Ronnie Wilbur.- Quantification in Cantonese by Peppina Lee.- Chicasaw Quantifiers by Pamela Munro.- Quantifiers in Dan-Gwɛɛtaa (South Mande) by Valentin Vydrine.- Quantification in Gitksan by Katie Bicevskis, Henry Davis, Lisa Matthewson.- Quantification in Hindi by Anoop Mahajan.- Quantification in Kusunda by Mark Donohue, Bhoj Raj Gautam.- Quantification in Malayalam by Pilar Chamorro Fernandez and Lindsey Antonini.- Quantification in Naxi by Paul Law and Qingliang Zhao.- Quantification in Nen by Nick Evans.- Quantification in Nungon by Hannah Sarvasy.- Quantification in Persian by Maziar Toosarvandani and Hayedeh Nasser.- Quantification in Q'anjob'al by Kathleen Chase O'Flynn.- Quantification in Imbabura Quichua by Jena Barchas-Lichtenstein, Cansada Martin, Pamela Munro, and Jos Tellings.- Quantifiers in Russian Sign Languageby Vadim Kimmelman.- Quantifiers in Turkish by Deniz Ozyıldız.- Quantification in Kenyah Uma Baha by Deborah J.M. Wong and Iara Mantenuto.- Quantification in Warlpiri by Margit Bowler.- Overview by Edward L. Keenan, D. Paperno.
