Formal Approaches to Semantic Microvariation: Adverbial ...

and cannot combine with a one-place predicate to form a generalized quantifier.
(24) a. *Pas
No
de personnes sont venus
of people were come
b. *J’ai vu pas de personnes
I have seen no of people
I therefore propose that pas denotes directly a polyadic quantifier NO ′′ , given in (25).
(25) For all R ∈ ⋃ n∈N P(E n ), NO”(R) = 1 iff R = Ø.
Note that pas is required to have a large domain, since it can bind many de phrases
within its scope.
(26) Il a pas laissé d’hommes voir de femmes embrasser d’enfants
He has not let of men see of women kiss of children
‘He didn’t let any men see any women kissing any children’ 5
In conclusion, I have argued that both dialects of French contain a series of polyadic
quantifiers in addition to degree adverbs. Following de Swart & Sag (2002), I argued
that (most) anti-additive quantifiers in French can quantify over relations of arity
greater than 1 through the application of a semantic rule. The only exception to this is
the adverbial negative marker pas, which I have argued is inherently polyadic. I argue
that the polyadic nature of these expressions is witnessed in two phenomena: 1) their
ability to participate in negative concord, and 2) their ability to license de phrases.
In the next section, I argue that we see further effects of semantics of these two
classes of quantifiers in French. Namely, I argue that it is the ability of these expression
to bind more than one variable that causes intervention effects in the Split-Combien
5 This example is due to Dominique Sportiche
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