LINGUIST List 15.1542

Thu May 13 2004

Qs: Floating Quantifier Placement

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Lisa Rochman, Floating quantifier placement

Message 1: Floating quantifier placement

Date: Thu, 13 May 2004 12:12:57 -0400 (EDT)
From: Lisa Rochman <lisa

bgumail.bgu.ac.il>
Subject: Floating quantifier placement


I am a graduate student researching floating quanifiers. I have
encounted several examples with 'all' immediately proceeding 'been'
For example:

1)The carpets will(all)have(all)been(all)being(all)dusted for two hours
(Sportiche 1988)

2)They(all)have(all)been(all)emptying their plates.
(Sobin 2003)

Although some authors note that judgements vary, none of my native
speaker informats judge 'been all' to be acceptable. As a native
speaker of American North Midlands dialect of English I find all
sentences of this type to be unacceptable. I am interested to know if
anyone finds these type of sentences acceptable and if so what dialect
of English they speak or what region they are from.

Thank you, 
Lisa Rochman
Ben Gurion University

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