This book presents a comprehensive account of quantifier scope in German. The author investigates scope behavior of ordinary quantifiers and negative, adverbial, interrogative, relative and particle quantifiers. The areas which are dealt with include: relative scope in simple sentences, absolute and relative scope in complex sentences, noun-phrase internal scope, and scope behavior of indefinite noun phrases. A theory of explicit and implicit quantification is proposed and a uniform process of scope determination is sketched which encompasses the scope of explicit as well as implicit quantifiers. Quantifier scope is a challenge to linguistic theory as it is a phenomenon which is determined by the interplay of diverse syntactic and semantic factors, which interact in a weighted and cumulative way. The factors' interplay is part of the syntax/semantics-interface, i.e., the constraints relating syntax and semantics, which are considered to be relatively autonomous, parallel levels connected by an interface of correspondence constraints.

Table of contents

Abbreviations and symbols ix–xi Preface xiii–xvi Preliminaries 1–49 Relative scope 51–136 Absolute scope 137–178 Indefinites and quantifiers 179–213 Interrogative quantifiers 215–235 Alternative scope accounts 237–260 Towards a theory of semantic structure 261–289 Concluding remarks 291–292 References 293–309 Index 311–312