Modified Numerals as Post-Suppositions

A. Brasoveanu
2012 Journal of Semantics  
The paper provides a compositional account of cumulative readings with non-increasing modified numerals (a.k.a. van Benthem's puzzle), e.g., Exactly 3 boys saw exactly 5 movies. The main proposal is that modified numerals make two kinds of semantic contributions. Their asserted / at-issue contribution is a maximization operator that introduces the maximal set of entities that satisfies their restrictor and nuclear scope. The second contribution is a postsupposition, i.e., a cardinality
more » ... t that needs to be satisfied relative to the context that results after the at-issue meaning is evaluated. Thus, the interpretation process ends up giving a kind of pseudo wide scope to the cardinality post-suppositions contributed by modified numerals.
doi:10.1093/jos/ffs003 fatcat:hlzi5hzmufaqdc3uaqxnhfm6nm