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

2.2.5. Floating Quantifiers
Koopman & Sportiche (1988) argue that FQs may be used as a diagnostic for detecting
the internal subject position even in languages where there is no free subject inversion. For
English, this position would be pre-VP (or pre-XP, where XP is an adjectival, nominal or
prepositional predicate, in copulative sentences), as the following examples suggest:
(26) a. The boys have all/both understood
b. The boys are all/both intelligent/students/in the kitchen
For Catalan (Spanish, and Italian), FQs can appear both in pre-VP and post-VP position:
(27) a. Els nois faran (tots) la feina (tots)
The boys will-do (all) the work (all)
b. Els nois estan (tots) cansats (tots)
The bois are (all) tired (all)
If Koopman & Sportiche's hypothesis is correct, then our idea that the subject basic
position is one of right-adjunction to the VP (or XP predicate) in Catalan will have to be
qualified.
Our suggestion is that, since the subject basic position is one of right-adjunction to VP in
Catalan, FQs appearing to the left of the object actually occupy a higher position in the structure
(a specifier of some FC). This is the hypothesis adopted in Bonet (1989).
On the other hand, for Catalan it is not clear that FQ are material left by NP-movement as
is assumed in Koopman & Sportiche. Consider the following examples:
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