Jaume Solà i Pujols - Departament de Filologia Catalana ...

many of the proposals coincide in characterizing some quantifiers as being 'less quantificational'
than the 'true' ones. For convenience, let us call the former 'weak' quantifiers (D-linked,
referential) 152 and the latter 'strong' quantifiers.
Now one possible expectation would be that only 'weak' quantifiers are possible
preverbal subjects or CLLD elements. The expectation is more or less fulfilled (remember,
however, what we said above about other factors, which might distort the results). So it is the
case that in Romance NSLs preverbal indefinite subjects tend to be 'referential' (= 'a certain') or
D-linked (= 'one of the'), while the purely existential interpretation is hard to obtain (see 0). Bare
indefinite DPs are simply not allowed as preverbal subjects in these languages (while they are in
English) -0.a); Some negative and proportional quantifiers are not either -see 0.b/.c); 0 shows
that the same restrictions hold for CLLD elements resumed by definite clitics:
(7) a. *Rocs cauen de la muntanya
Stones fall from the mountain
b. *Res ha passat
Nothing has happened
c. *Pocs estudiants han vingut
Few students have come
152 Cinque (1990) uses referential for what we call 'weak',
assuming referentiality subsumes D-linking. In fact, it seems to
me that with D-linked quantification what is really referential
is the set over which the quantifiers range. But it is only a
matter of terminology: 'weak'/'strong' are in fact vague terms
used here to avoid being committed to specific theories of
quantification.
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