22.215, Qs: Quantifier/State-of-Affairs Ambiguity

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LINGUIST List: Vol-22-215. Thu Jan 13 2011. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 22.215, Qs: Quantifier/State-of-Affairs Ambiguity

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1)
Date: 12-Jan-2011
From: Neal Whitman [nwhitman at ameritech.net]
Subject: Quantifier/State-of-Affairs Ambiguity
 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2011 13:37:45
From: Neal Whitman [nwhitman at ameritech.net]
Subject: Quantifier/State-of-Affairs Ambiguity

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I would like to know if the following family of ambiguities in English 
exists in other languages.

The idiom "No news is good news", with standard generalized-
quantifier (GQ) semantics, would mean "There is no news x such that x 
is good news", i.e. there's no such thing as good news. In reality, it 
means something more like, "The state of affairs in which there is no 
news is good news." 

Similarly, the idiom "Too many cooks spoil the broth" with standard GQ 
semantics would mean that there are too many broth-spoiling cooks. In 
reality, it usually means, "When you have too many cooks, that spoils 
the broth."

This ambiguity often occurs with the verb "mean". For example, "More 
money means more problems." With standard GQ semantics, this 
would mean that the amount of money that means an amount of 
problems exceeds some number X, exceeds some number Y. In reality, 
rather than having such a difficult-to-grasp meaning, it just means, 
"The state of affairs in which more money (than some contextually 
given amount) exists means that more problems (than some 
contextually given amount) exist."

I have called this ambiguity the quantifier/state-of-affairs ambiguity, and 
it seems to occur with any indefinite NP in English. For example, the 
phrase "Most cooks spoil the soup", with the non-indefinite NP "most 
cooks", is unambiguous, with only its usual GQ semantics: "Of all the 
cooks, more than half of them spoil the broth." 

For further background on the subject, see the following blog entries 
on a poster I presented on this subject:

http://literalminded.wordpress.com/2011/01/05/no-one-would-be-better/
http://literalminded.wordpress.com/2011/01/07/all-work-and-no-play/

My question is whether languages other than English have this kind of 
ambiguity. If so, can it occur with any NP, or only indefinites? Is it 
marked syntactically or morphogically?

Thanks! 

Linguistic Field(s): Semantics




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