Formal Approaches to Semantic Microvariation: Adverbial ...

She attributes this exceptional violation of the ME requirement to the fact that the de
phrase contains a mass noun. Such an example is unexpected in the current version of
my analysis, since I have not included any proposals about mass nouns in particular.
Thus, I would expect sentences with mass nouns to behave in a similar way to their
plural counterparts.
However, I argue that there are reasons to believe that the ME requirement does
still hold in the standard dialect for sentences with mass nouns. Setting (102) aside,
we can repeat most of the tests for the ME requirement with mass de phrases, and
obtain the same result as with count nouns. For example, Obenauer (1983) observes
that (103) is bad, even though it contains a mass noun.
(103) *Il vient de beaucoup boire de lait
He comes to a lot drink of milk
We find the exact same pattern with existential constructions: the speakers that do not
accept a QAD sentence with the plural count noun personnes ‘people’, do not find a
QAD sentence with a mass noun, like monde ‘people’ any better.
(104) a. *Il y a beaucoup eu de personnes chez nous hier
It there has a lot had of people by us yesterday
b. *Il y a beaucoup eu de monde chez nous hier
It there has a lot had of people by us yesterday
I therefore conclude, contra Doetjes, that QAD with mass nouns works in the same
way as count QAD.
With respect to (102), the impression that we are dealing with a single event most
likely comes from the PP pendant dix minutes. However, I claim that this is only
an impression. Unlike PPs like en soulevant le couvercle ‘lifting the lid’ that force a
single event reading (these are known as point adverbials in the literature), pendant
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