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Description:
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Covering a strikingly diverse range of languages from 12 linguistic families, this
handbook is based on responses to a questionnaire constructed by the editors.
Focusing on the formation, distribution and semantic interpretation of
quantificational expressions, the book explores 17 languages including German,
Italian, Russian, Mandarin Chinese, Malagasy, Hebrew, Pima, Basque, and
more. The language data sets enable detailed crosslinguistic comparison of
numerous features. These include semantic classes of quantifiers (generalized
existential, generalized universal, proportional, partitive), syntactically complex
quantifiers (intensive modification, Boolean compounding, exception phrases)
and several others such as quantifier scope ambiguities, quantifier float, and
binary quantifiers. Its theory-independent content extends earlier work by
Matthewson (2008) and Bach et al. (1995), making this handbook suitable for
linguists, semanticians, philosophers of language and logicians alike.
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