Article published in:
Linguistics in the Netherlands 2020
Edited by Elena Tribushinina and Mark Dingemanse
[Linguistics in the Netherlands 37] 2020
► pp. 2–22

Event-distributivity and exhaustivity

Insights into distributive share markers from experiments with German jeweils

| University of Groningen | University of Nantes
| University of Groningen
| University of Groningen
Distributive-share markers such as jeweils in German or po in Serbian allow for event-distributive readings, where events are distributed over spatio-temporal units, unlike distributive quantifiers such as each in English that only allow individual-distributive readings. Some researchers propose that German jeweils should be analyzed as a universal event-distributive quantifier. In contrast, other researchers claim distributive share markers (e.g. Serbian po) are simply event plurality markers. We investigated these claims with jeweils in two experiments. Experiment 1 tested if both individual and spatial (event) distributive readings are readily available for transitive sentences in German, and if there is an exhaustivity requirement on the restrictor argument. Experiment 2 was designed to force event-distributive readings and further disambiguate the results from Experiment 1. Our findings suggest that jeweils seems to be a true universal event quantifier, and highlight that distributive share markers can differ in fundamental features cross-linguistically.
Keywords: quantification, distributivity, distributive share markers, exhaustivity, event-distributive readings
Published online: 27 October 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/avt.00034.bos
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