@inproceedings{b03ee128a4b841d9a34e6c31e40b9525,
title = "The algebraic structure of amounts: Evidence from comparatives",
abstract = "Heim [9] notes certain restrictions on quantifier intervention in comparatives and proposes an LF-constraint to account for this. I show that these restrictions are identical to constraints on intervention in wh-questions widely discussed under the heading of weak islands. I also show that Heim's proposal is too restrictive: existential quantifiers can intervene. Both of these facts follow from the algebraic semantic theory of weak islands in Szabolcsi & Zwarts [25], which assigns different algebraic structures to amounts and counting expressions. This theory also makes novel predictions about the interaction of degree operators with conjunction and disjunction, which I show to be correct. Issues involving modal interveners [9], interval semantics for degrees [23,1], and density [4] are also considered.",
keywords = "algebraic semantics, comparatives, degrees, disjunction, quantification, weak islands",
author = "Daniel Lassiter",
note = "Thanks to Chris Barker, Anna Szabolcsi, Arnim von Stechow, Emmanuel Chemla, Yoad Winter, Lucas Champillon, Rick Nouwen, Roberto Zamparelli, Roger Schwarzschild, several anonymous reviewers, and audiences at the 33rd Penn Lin- guistics Colloquium and the 2009 ESSLLI Student Session for helpful discussion and advice.; 21st European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information, ESSLI '09 ; Conference date: 20-07-2009 Through 31-07-2009",
year = "2010",
month = jul,
day = "27",
doi = "10.1007/978-3-642-14729-6_4",
language = "English",
isbn = "9783642147289",
series = "Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)",
publisher = "Springer",
pages = "38--56",
editor = "Thomas Icard and Reinhard Muskens",
booktitle = "Interfaces: Explorations in Logic, Language and Computation",
address = "United Kingdom",
edition = "1",
}