Definites and floating quantifiers" (tous/all), linguista sum. Mélanges offerts à Marc Dominicy
Résumé
A typical property of definite NPs is that they can be modified by floating expressions with a strong quantificational flavour. Tous, in French, all in English are expressions of that kind, as exemplified in (1) and (2) : (1) The students are all asleep. (2) Les étudiants sont tous endormis. The combinability of these two kinds of expressions – definites and markers of universal quantification – raises difficulties for standard theories of definite NPs, since most of these theories take for granted that the meaning of definiteness involves some form of maximality. line I will follow in this paper is close to Dowty (1986)'s approach: I think it is important to explain why some predicates do not combine with floating quantifiers in order to understand the association when it is licensed. However, my proposal will try to avoid some problems encountered by Dowty's, and will try to relate a plausible non-quantificational theory of definiteness with the behaviour of definites and floating expressions.
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