Exhaustivity and homogeneity effects with distributive‐share markers: Experimental evidence from Serbian po

Ana Bosnić, Hamida Demirdache, J. Spenader

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

There are two competing approaches to the semantics of distributive-share markers: they are either universal distributive quantifiers over events or are merely event-plurality markers. To address this debate, we present new conclusions based on novel experiments with Serbian transitive sentences in which the distributive-share marker po was attached to the direct object. The first two experiments investigated exhaustivity effects in transitive sentences with po, while the third experiment probed homogeneity effects across three types of negative transitive sentences: with po marking the object, with the distributive-key quantifier svaki (‘every’) in subject position, and with neither. If po is a universal quantifier, then it should enforce exhaustive distribution over a distributive key and remove homogeneity effects in negative sentences with a definite subject. If instead po is an event-plurality marker with no universal quantificational force, then it should neither enforce exhaustive distribution nor remove homogeneity effects in negative sentences with a definite subject. We conclude that there are two populations of Serbian speakers with systematic patterns of interpretation: one population interprets po as a universal quantifier and one population interprets po as an event-plurality marker. We conjecture that this population split might reflect an ongoing diachronic change in the semantic import of the distributive-share marker po.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1-38
JournalSyntax
Volume25
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Mar 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Hamida Demirdache and Jennifer Spenader should be considered joint senior authors of this article. We thank Nataša Knežević, Boban Arsenijević, Seth Cable, Orin Percus, Bart Hollebrandse, Angeliek van Hout, Anamaria Fălăuş, Jakub Dotlačil, Anna de Koster, and Oana Lungu for invaluable discussions, advice, comments, and feedback at different stages of this study. We also thank our research groups and labs for useful meetings and discussions: the Nantes Linguistics Lab (Joint Research Unit 6310, French National Center for Scientific Research/University of Nantes) and the Acquisition Lab and the Semantics and Cognition group (University of Groningen). Conducting this research would not have been possible without numerous informants and participants in our experiments, whose input and judgments we greatly appreciate. This research was partly sponsored by Ammodo (Groningen–Nantes Van Gogh research grant).

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Authors. Syntax published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Keywords

  • distributive-share markers
  • event plurality
  • exhaustivity
  • homogeneity
  • maximality

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