partitivity in Zamparelli's analysis to which I turn presently. Zamparelli's analysis of partitives takes of to be the r
Partitivity in natural language Bert Le Bruyn Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS
[email protected]
Abstract. In this paper I will look at two analyses of partitives that incorporate the anti-uniqueness constraint in the semantics: [2] and [21] and [22]. I will show that they present both conceptual and empirical problems and I will present a novel, pragmatic alternative. The main focus is on Zamparelli’s and my own analysis. Special attention is paid to a particular kind of partitive, viz. the faded partitive ([10]).
1
Introduction
In this paper I will look at two analyses of partitives that incorporate the anti-uniqueness constraint in the semantics: [2] and [21], [22]. I will show that they present both conceptual and empirical problems and I will defend a pragmatic alternative. The main focus is on Zamparelli’s and my own analysis. Special attention is paid to a particular kind of partitive, viz. the faded partitive ([10]).1 In section 1 I will introduce the anti-uniqueness constraint and Barker’s analysis in an informal way. Section 2 presents and evaluates Zamparelli’s analysis of full partitives. Section 3 is concerned with his analysis of faded partitives. Section 4 summarizes the previous sections and introduces section 5 which contains my analysis. In section 6 a brief conclusion along with a discussion of the anonymous reviewer’s comments is presented.
2
Anti-uniqueness
[2] discusses the following contrast from Jackendoff:2 1. 2. 1 2
∗I
met the [two of the men].
I met the [[two of the men] that you pointed out last night].
Pseudo-partitives (e.g. A cup of tea) are not treated in this paper. I adapted the original example and I left out the parallel case of double genitives.
35 Proceedings of the Twelfth ESSLLI Student Session Ville Nurmi and Dmitry Sustretov (editors) c 2007, Bert Le Bruyn This article, Copyright
Partitivity in natural language
The fact that partitive constructions as in (1) cannot combine with the definite article is called the anti-uniqueness constraint on partitives. The way Barker accounts for the contrast is to assume that partitive of is not a realization of the improper part operator (≤) but of the stronger proper part operator (
