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On Barwise and Cooper’s “Generalized Quantifiers and Natural Language”

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A Reader's Guide to Classic Papers in Formal Semantics

Part of the book series: Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy ((SLAP,volume 100))

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Abstract

I review “Generalized Quantifiers and Natural Language”, 1981, by Jon Barwise and Robin Cooper. I focus on the flurry of activity triggered by their paper in the early 1980s and then focus on what I consider the two major innovations in their paper: direct interpretation of English, and hypothesized language universals. I document some of the related work done in the decades following their paper.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Occasionally, to better capture the flurry of activity immediately around the publication date of B&C I use dates of the form 19xx/yy to mean that the publication date was 19yy but that the piece was circulated and fed the literature in 19xx. E.g. Westerståhl, 1982/1984, 1982/1985 did not formally appear until 1984 and 1985, but in fact were drawn on right after B&C in 1982. The same holds for van Benthem, 1982/1983, 1982/1984. The gap is even bigger for K&S, 1981/1986, cited as 1981 in Westerståhl, 1982/1984, 1982/1985; Keenan & Moss, 1984a, b; Thysse, 1984; van Benthem, 1982/1983, 1982/1984 cite it as 1982.

  2. 2.

    This point is not uncommonly ignored in the linguistic literature. E.g. studies of quantifier scope ambiguities are often illustrated with just first order ones: all/every/each, some/a, no, one, two, …, at least one, …

  3. 3.

    B&C’s U2 is: Dislocated expressions associated with variable binding always include NPs. U2 of a different character than the other universals B&C suggest. The truth of U2 cannot be decided at this time. Derivation by movement is ubiquitous and whether it is associated with variable binding is not clear. Moreover B&C provide no analysis of variable binding.

  4. 4.

    Keenan & Faltz, 1985; Peters & Westerståhl, 2006; Bastiaanse, 2013; Romero, 2015; Ahn & Sauerland, 2017; von Fintel & Keenan, 2018; Zuber & Keenan, 2019.

  5. 5.

    In French aucun when used as a subject of a complete sentence still requires an accompanying ne and so is not (?yet) a stand alone Det like tout ‘all’.

    In contrast Spanish ningún ‘no’ is used alone with a preverbal subject (but still requires a verbal negation when used postverbally). Thanks to Louise McNally and Nancy Gutierrez for the observation.

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Acknowledgments

Thanks to Zoltán Gendler Szabó for discussion of several points in this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Linguistics, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Edward L. Keenan

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Translation and Language Sciences, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain

    Louise McNally

  2. Department of Philosophy, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Zoltán Gendler Szabó

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L. Keenan, E. (2022). On Barwise and Cooper’s “Generalized Quantifiers and Natural Language”. In: McNally, L., Szabó, Z.G. (eds) A Reader's Guide to Classic Papers in Formal Semantics. Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, vol 100. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85308-2_3

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