Notes on computational linguistics.pdf - UCLA Department of ...

Stabler - Lx 185/209 2003
16.4 Scope inversion
That idea has been developed to apply to the data above in recent work by Beghelli and Stowell (1996) and
Szabolcsi (1996).
This strategy may seem odd, but Szabolcsi (1996) notes that we may be slightly reassured by the observation
that in some languages, we seem to find overt counterparts of the “covert movements” we are proposing in
English. For example, Hungarian exhibits scope ambiguities, but there are certain constructions with “fronted”
constituents that are scopally unambiguous:
(5) a. Sok ember mindenkit felhívott
many man everyone-acc up-called
‘Many men phoned everyone’
where many men < everyone
b. Mindenkit sok ember felhívott
everyone-acc many man up-called
‘Many men phoned everyone’
where everyone < many men
(6) a. Hatnál több ember hívott fel mindenkit
six-than more man called up everyone-acc
‘More than six men phoned everyone’
where more than six men < everyone
b. Mindenkit hatnál több ember hívott fel
everyone-acc six-than more man called up
‘More than six men phoned everyone’
where everyone < more than six men
Certain other languages have scopally unambiguous fronted elements like this, such as KiLega and Palestinian
Arabic. Scrambling in Hindi and some Germanic languages seems to depend on the “specificity” of the scrambled
element, giving it a “wide scope.”
To account for these and many other similar observations, Beghelli and Stowell (1996) and Szabolcsi (1996)
propose that determiner phrases occupy different positions in structure according to (inter alia) the type of
quantifiers they contain. Furthermore, following the recent tradition in transformational grammar, they assume
that every language has structures with special positions for topicalized and focused elements, though
languages will differ according to whether the elements in these positions are pronounced there or not.
We can implement this kind of proposal quite easily. First, let’s distinguish five categories of determiners:
wh-QPs (which, what)
neg(ative)-QPs (no, nobody)
dist(ributive)-QPs (every, each)
count-QPs (few, fewer than five, six,…)
group-QPs (optionally, the, some, a, one, three, …)
We assume that these categories can cause just certain kinds of quantified phrases to move.
Both Beghelli and Stowell (1996) and Szabolcsi (1996) propose that the clause structure be elaborated with
new functional heads: not because those heads are ever overt, but just in order to provide specifier positions
for the various kinds of quantifier phrases. In our framework, multiple specifiers are allowed and so we do not
need the extra heads. Furthermore, introducing extra heads between T and v would disrupt the affix-hopping
analysis of English proposed in §10.2.1, since affix hopping is not recursive in the way that verb raising is: one
affix hop cannot feed another. Also, Beghelli and Stowell (1996, p81) propose that Dist can license any number
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