Stage-Level and Individual-Level Predicates and the Semantics of Jeweils

In this subsection, we turn back to the beginning and provide a refinement of the discussion of events from section 1.1. At the same time, the discussion is a further step towards the final semantic analysis of adverbial jeweils. Taking up remarks in fn.3 and at the end of section 1.1, it is shown that not every predicate introduces an event argument into the logical representation of a sentence. Based on this, adverbial quantifiers, and adverbial jeweils in particular, are shown to occur only with those predicates that introduce an event argument. This is as expected if adverbial quantifiers quantify over atomic events. Finally, the data from this section provide further support for the analysis of adverbial quantifiers as binding an event variable in their restriction and their nuclear scope.

Kratzer (1995) observes a difference between individual-level and stage-level predicates wrt adverbial quantification, the possibility to extract from subject position (in German), and the interpretation of bare plural arguments in subject position. Based on the evidence cited, Kratzer (1995) concludes that only stage-level predicates introduce an event argument, whereas individual-level predicates do not. I will quickly recapitulate her discussion concerning adverbial quantification.

The distinction between individual- and stage-level predicates goes back to Carlson (1977) and is illustrated in (58):

(58) a. Kemal speaks Turkish (on the phone right now). b. Kemal knows Turkish.

27 _{On this interpretation, (57) can be paraphrased as ‘For all sets of sets of events E’, there are some sets of}

events E ∈ E’ such that E is a plurality of events of individual boys sleeping.

28 _{This conclusion implies that verbal domain and the nominal domain may differ with respect to the existence of}

a hierarchy of individual or event types. As shown by Schwarzschild (1992), there is no need to assume a hierarchy of types in the nominal domain, as is argued in Landman (1989).

The stage-level predicate speak Turkish in (58a) denotes a more transient property of Kemal. It only holds of Kemal at certain points of time. Other examples of stage-level predicates are being furious, being happy, being asleep. The individual-level predicate in (58b), on the other hand, denotes a property that holds of Kemal over time. Other examples of individual-level predicates are be smart, be 6ft tall, be altruistic.29

Now consider (59ab). In (59a), the adverbial quantifier always is combined with a stage-level predicate in its restriction and its nuclear scope, and the sentence is grammatical. In (59b), the adverbial quantifier is combined with an individual-level predicate, and the sentence is ungrammatical (Kratzer 1995:129).

(59) a. Always, [when Kemal speaks Turkish], [he speaks it well]. b. *Always, [when Kemal knows Turkish], [he knows it well].

Interestingly, (59b) becomes grammatical if the proper noun Kemal is replaced with an indefinite NP (ibid.).

(60) Always, when a Kurd knows Turkish, he also knows Kurdish.

Kratzer accounts for the difference between (59a) and (59b), on the one hand, and between (59b) and (60) on the other, by means of the following four assumptions.

(61) i. Stage-level predicates introduce an event variable, individual-level predicates do not. (ibid.:131)

ii. Indefinite NPs have no quantificational force of their own. They introduce a variable that is bound by an overt quantifier, or by existential closure. (ibid.:130)

iii. Existential closure applies to the nuclear scope of a quantifier. It binds all non- anaphoric (i.e. free, or novel occurrences of variables in its scope. (ibid.:143) iv. Every quantifier Q must bind (at least one occurrence of) a variable x, both in its

restriction and in its nuclear scope. (ibid.:131)

All but (61i) are independently motivated in connection with other phenomena. (61ii) is the analysis of indefinite expressions in the DRT-tradition (Kamp 1981, Heim 1982), which was already utilised in the syntactic analysis of German numeral expressions in chapter I.2.4.2. (61iii) is from Heim (1982). It was already – more or less implicitly – present in our discussion of adverbial quantification in section 1.3. (61iv) is Kratzer’s ‘Prohibition on Vacuous Quantification’. It says that quantifiers cannot apply vacuously (see also Chomsky 1982).

With (61i-iii), and using the general scheme of adverbial quantification in (53), (59ab) and (60) are analysable as in (62a-c):

29 _{Note that predicates, including predicates like speak English as in Do you speak English?, can be ambiguous}

between stage- and individual-level readings. The ambiguity of be stupid in (iab) is determined by the linguistic context, in particular the presence of never and that day:

(i) a. John was stupid. He never knew any answers at school.

b. John was stupid that day. He always regretted this particular mistake. It was his only one.

In general, there is a certain amount of vagueness involved in the categorisation of particular predicates as stage- or individual-level, which is mostly based on contextual information or our knowledge of the world. See Kratzer (1995:125-126) for discussion.

(62) a. ∀e [speak’(kemal,turkish, e) Æ∃e’[(e=e’) ∧ speaks_well’(kemal, turkish, e’)] b.* ∀e [know’ (kemal, turkish) Æ know_well’ (kemal, turkish)]

c. ∀x [ kurd’(x) ∧ know’ (x, turkish) Æ know’(x, kurdish)]

In (62a), the universal quantifier binds the event variable e in restriction and nuclear scope, obeying the prohibition on vacuous quantification (61iv). In (62c), the universal quantifier binds an individual variable x in its restriction and its nuclear scope, again obeying the prohibition on vacuous quantification. In (62b), however, there are no variables to be bound. The proper name Kemal does not introduce an individual variable, nor does the individual-level predicate know Turkish (well). This follows on Kratzer’s assumption (61i). As a consequence, the quantifier has no variables to bind, and (62b) is ungrammatical because it violates the ‘Prohibition on Vacuous Quantification’ in (61iv). Hence, the assumption that only stage-level predicates introduce event variables into the logical representation of a clause provides an account for the data in (59ab) and (60). The ungrammaticality of (59b) remains even if we replace the individual-level predicate in either the restriction or in the nuclear scope with a stage-level predicate.30 (63) a. *Always, [when Kemal speaks Turkish], [he knows it].

b. *Always, [when Kemal knows Turkish], [he speaks it well].

(63ab) support the claim that adverbial quantifiers must bind an event variable, not only in their restriction, but also in their nuclear scope. The same holds for adverbial jeweils, which cannot co-occur with an individual-level predicate, as shown by (64b).

(64) a. Peter hat jeweils Finnisch gesprochen. Peter has each.time Finnish spoken

‘Each time, Peter spoke Finnish.’

b. *Peter hat jeweils Finnisch gekonnt. Peter has each.time Finnish known

*‘Each time, Peter knew Finnish.’

I conclude that jeweils behaves like other adverbial quantifiers. It cannot occur with individual-level predicates because it has to bind an event variable in its nuclear scope. 1.5 Events as External Arguments

The importance of events for quantification with adverbial quantifiers raises the question where they are located in the logical representation. In this subsection, I briefly summarise Kratzer’s argument that the event variable is the (implicit) external argument of stage- level verbs. As such it is the outermost argument of the verb, located outside the VP. Empirical evidence for the external argument status of events comes from the interpretation of bare subjects with stage-level predicates in German. (65a) is ambiguous between a generic reading and an existential reading for the subject. In contrast, the bare subject must be interpreted generically with an individual-level predicate (cf.65b).

30 _{(63ab) are grammatical under an interpretation that treats to know as a stage-level predicate, i.e. under the}

(65) a. … weil Hunde bellen. because dogs bark

‘…because dogs bark/ dogs are barking.’ b. … weil Hunde dumm sind. because dogs stupid are

‘…because dogs are stupid.’ * ‘…because there are stupid dogs.’

On the generic reading, the variable introduced by the bare subject is bound by a generic operator. On this reading, (65a) means that dogs generally bark. On the existential reading, it means that there is an event of dogs barking. On this reading, the variable introduced by the bare subject is bound by an existential operator introduced by existential closure, which applies at the edge of VP (see also Diesing 1992). In order to get into the scope of the existential quantifier, the bare subject NP must reconstruct at LF into its base position inside VP. Without reconstruction, the subject remains in its base position, and can only be bound by a generic operator. The emergence of the two readings is schematised in (66ab).

(66) a. No reconstruction:

[IP dogs1 [VP t1 bark]] Æ Genx [dogs’(x)] [x barks] Æ generic reading

b. Reconstruction:

[IP e1 ∃[VP dogs bark]] Æ ∃e,x [dogs’(x)] [x barks in e] Æ existential reading The possibility of an existential reading shows that the base position of the subject in (65a) must be inside the VP below the locus of existential closure. Since the external argument is by definition that argument which is base-generated outside the VP, it follows that the subject argument cannot be the external argument. It follows by exclusion that the implicit event argument must be the external event argument.

This conclusion is supported by the non-ambiguity of (65b). Stage-level predicates do not introduce an event argument. Therefore the subject NP is the external argument of the verb and must be base-generated outside the VP. It follows that the subject cannot reconstruct to a position inside the VP. Hence it cannot get into the scope of the existential quantifier at the edge of VP. And therefore the existential interpretation is impossible for (65b).

1.6 Summary

The preceding discussion has delivered the following results concerning the semantics of events in general, and the semantics of adverbial quantification and of adverbial jeweils in particular:

(67) i. Events are semantically real (though syntactically implicit) entities. Stage-level predicates introduce them as event variables into the logical representation of sentences.

ii. The event is realised as the external argument of a stage-level predicate. iii. Event variables can be bound in two ways: (i.) by adverbial quantifiers, or (ii.)

by existential closure (in the absence of adverbial quantifiers, or in the nuclear scope of an adverbial quantifier).

iv. Events can be complex in various ways. Atomic events can form material parts of other events, or they can combine to form plural events. Adverbial

quantifiers, including adverbial jeweils, operate only over such pluralities of events, which can be represented as sets.

v. Adverbial quantifiers take two sets of events as arguments.

vi. Adverbial quantifiers, including adverbial jeweils, must bind an event variable in their restriction and their nuclear scope.

This provides the necessary background for the semantic analysis of adverbial jeweils. 2 The Semantics of Adverbial Jeweils

This section presents the semantic analysis of adverbial jeweils. The analysis is compositional, with jeweils being interpreted in its surface position. This approach is in line with methodological principle (M2): Interpret elements in their surface position if this can be done compositionally. In chapter III.1, adverbial jeweils was argued to be located in VP-adjoined position. The syntactic structure, which provides the input for interpretation, is repeated as (68).

(68) … weil [IP Peter1 [VP jeweils [VP t1 lachte]]]. because Peter each.time laughed

The analysis is based on the assumption that adverbial jeweils is an adverbial quantifier. The relevant observations supporting this assumption are repeated in (69):

(69) i. Jeweils is distributed like adverbial quantifiers. It is adjoined to VP (or higher) ii. Jeweils is incompatible with other adverbial quantifiers

iii. Jeweils distributes over sets of events from the preceding discourse. iv. Jeweils binds an event variable in its nuclear scope

The semantic analysis of adverbial jeweils as an adverbial quantifier follows directly. In section 2.1, I show how the general scheme of adverbial quantification in (53) applies to adverbial jeweils. However, jeweils is argued to be a special instance of an adverbial quantifier in section 2.2. This claim is based on the special morphosyntactic shape of

jeweils. In chapter III.4.2.1, the s-suffix on jeweil-s was analysed as a genitive marker that

licenses a phonetically empty prepositional head. In 2.2, I argue that this empty preposition has semantic content. It provides a relation variable R that establishes a relation between two events. As shown in section 1.3, the presence of a relation variable in the semantic representation must be assumed for adverbial quantification anyway. In my view, jeweils differs from other adverbial quantifiers in that it contributes the relation variable itself. In section 2.3, I discuss the context dependency of jeweils. In particular, I will support the view that the morpheme –weil- denotes a pronoun over sets of individuals. Arguments for this claim come from the parallel behaviour of jeweils and the plural pronoun sie ‘they’ regarding their discourse anaphoric properties. Finally, I show that the semantic analysis of adverbial jeweils accounts for all its syntactic properties, which were laid out in chapter III.1.