Indefinites, quantifiers, and pluractionals. What scope effects tell us about event pluralities.

Abstract

In this paper, I will examine the way in which two Spanish aspectual periphrases contributing pluractional aspectual operators interact with indefinite, quantified and plural noun-phrases, with the aim of arriving at a better understanding of these aspectual operators. I will show that, although temporal pluractional operators of the sort proposed by Van Geenhoven (2004, 2005) can adequately capture the temporal structure of the derived eventuality descriptions contributed by two Spanish motion-verb periphrases, they should not be allowed to enter into scopal interactions with nominal arguments. The very peculiar pattern of interaction with plural and quantified NP arguments labelled ‘distribution' has parallels in the nominal domain. These parallels provide strong support for the relevance of the distinction between sums and groups in the event domain. They show, furthermore, that pluractional aspectual operators – of the type represented by these two Spanish periphrases – crucially differ from frequency adverbs such as repeatedly, occasionally

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