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Part of
Particles in German, English, and Beyond
Edited by Remus Gergel, Ingo Reich and Augustin Speyer
[Studies in Language Companion Series 224] 2022
► pp. 95–116

Chapter 4
The interpretation of the German additive particle auch (‘too, also’) in quantificational contexts

| University of Graz

This article discusses an unexpected interpretation that arises for the German additive particle auch (‘too, also’) in quantificational contexts. It will be proposed that what auch conveys in such contexts is a superset-to-subset relation between two of its arguments. This rather unusual meaning and its alternation with the classical additive meaning will be argued to be tied to specific syntactic constructions in which the particle occurs. The main purpose of this article is to present novel data and make a tentative suggestion on how the correspondence between syntactic structure and semantic interpretation could be explained.

Keywords: additive particle, quantification, appositive, superset-to-subset relation, German, inclusion, presupposition, anaphora
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.More data & previous theories on additives
    • 2.1The distribution of inclusive and exclusive readings
    • 2.2Previous theories on additives
  • 3.The proposal
    • 3.1The underlying principle
    • 3.2Consequences and predictions
  • 4.What needs to be done
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 16 August 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.224.04but
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