Formal Approaches to Semantic Microvariation: Adverbial ...

texts, but only if the direct object contains a mass noun. She presents the following
example with the mass noun eau ‘water’ inside the object de phrase.
(38) Pendant ces dix minutes, la fontaine a beaucoup craché d’eau
During these ten minutes, the fountain has a lot spit of water
‘During these ten minutes, the fountain spouted a lot of water in the air’
(Doetjes (1997:257))
This sentence can be true if there is a single event that lasted ten minutes in which a
lot of water spouted in the air.
In summary, it appears that certain aspects of the argument structure of the VP, like
the presence of a degree argument on the verb or a mass noun inside the direct object,
can block QAD. These facts contradict a movement analysis: if the semantic argument
of the quantifier is only the object de phrase, why should the quantifier be sensitive to
the semantic properties of the verb or the VP?
2.1.2.5 Summary
In conclusion, the data and arguments give in the works of Kayne, Obenauer, and
Doetjes clearly point to an adverbial analysis of QAD: QAD is sensitive to properties
of the verb and the VP that normally do not block movement. Furthermore, the interpretation
of QAD sentences is not one that we would expect in a movement analysis.
Obenauer’s Multiplicity of Events requirement indicates that quantification in QAD is
at least partially, if not wholly, over the event argument of the verb, and this conclusion
is further supported by Kayne’s observation that the class of QAD quantifiers is
identical to the class of adverbial degree quantifiers.
Of course, these arguments only apply to a simple ‘standard’ type of movement
analysis in which the quantifier in an adverbial position binds only its trace in the direct
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