Determiners as predicates

Abstract

Since Montague (1973), higher-order functions have formed the blueprint for analyzing determiner meanings in natural language, giving rise to the ‘standard’ relational treatment of Generalized Quantifier theory (Barwise & Cooper 1981; Keenan & Stavi 1986). The goal of this short paper is to begin sketching an alternative to Generalized Quantifier theory, in which determiners are treated as predicates of structured entities. In order to make sense of this idea, I build on recent work by Bledin (forthcoming), who suggests incorporating a notion of polarity into the domain of entities. The resulting account of determiner meanings is significantly more restrictive than the standard account—concretely, I demonstrate that nonconservative determiners cannot be expressed as predicates in the resulting system. Some additional applications of the resulting theory are explored, most prominently novel predictions concerning split and exceptional scope.