AMOUNT RELATIVES Alexander Grosu and Fred Landman Department of Linguistics, Tel Aviv University
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[email protected] word count (excluding abstract): 23,113 Abstract We introduce amount relatives by discussing three types of relatives: those with a lexically realized amount head (d-headed relatives); those without such a head, but with an amount interpretation (d-interpreted relatives); and relatives with an individual interpretation, but with the gap in a position that does not support an individual variable (ep-relatives). We discuss in some depth several diagnostic tests - proposed in and modified from Carlson 1977a - which distinguish these types of relatives from ordinary restricted relatives. We argue that together these tests justify Carlson's claim that these constructions need to be treated as a coherent subtype of relative clauses, amount relatives. We discuss the strengths and weaknesses of earlier proposals for the syntax and semantics of amount relatives (Carlson 1977a, Heim 1987, Grosu and Landman 1998), and then provide a syntax and semantics for the three types of amount relatives (extending and modifying the analysis of ep-relatives in Grosu and Landman 1998, and providing detailed analyses of d-headed and d-interpreted relatives, which were barely touched on in Grosu and Landman 1998). This analysis covers more types of constructions than that in Grosu and Landman 1998, addresses a broader set of data, and links the syntax and semantics of amount relatives to recent thinking on syntactic and semantic heads in measure and classifier constructions. In an appendix we discuss the complexities arising when the gap of the amount relative is in a modal context (including problems relating to issues of relative-internal interpretation of relative-external material).