Non-conservative construals with percentages in Slavic and German
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| Year of publication | 2021 |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | In this paper, we show that both conservative and non-conservative readings also exist in languages that do not display a morphosyntactic distinction between the corresponding percentage quantifier constructions. Based on data from corpora and cross-linguistic questionnaires, we make the novel empirical generalization that word order plays a crucial role in distinguishing between the two readings, irrespective of whether a language additionally marks the difference between the two by the use of definite vs. bare nominals (German, Bulgarian and Macedonian) or not (the other Slavic languages). We argue against previous accounts that ascribe a crucial role to focus for the NC reading to arise, in taking focus to merely be derivative from the requirement of non-conservative percentage quantifiers to appear low, paired with a general rule for sentential stress placement. |
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