1 - What this book is about and how to use it

Summary

The proper treatment of quantification in ordinary Human

In The proper treatment of quantification in ordinary English Montague sets forth his goal as follows:

“The aim of this paper is to present in a rigorous way the syntax and semantics of a certain fragment of a certain dialect of English. For expository purposes the fragment has been made as simple and restricted as it can be while accommodating all the more puzzling cases of quantification and reference with which I am acquainted.”

(Montague 1974a: 247)

The goal of this book is to survey a good chunk of the research that has been directed at Montague's puzzles and their natural extensions in the past 35 years. The survey has a dual focus. One is on how the understanding of “quantification” and “quantifier” has been changing over time. The way I see it, we have witnessed three main stages of research:

Grand uniformity (the 1970s and 1980s)

Foundational work that affords a uniform treatment of initially disparate- looking phenomena: generalized quantifiers for all noun phrases, a kind-based treatment of existential and generic readings of bare plurals, etc.

Diversity (the 1980s and 1990s)

Dynamic semantics for definites and indefinites, choice-functional indefinites vs. others, the differential behavior of quantifiers

Internal composition (from 2000 on)

Quantifier-phrase-internal and, most recently, quantifier-word-internal compositionality

The other focus is on the core notion of scope and its implementation in several varieties of generative syntax and categorial grammar.