Quantification

Abstract

Quantification is abundant in natural language and is one of the most studied topics in generative grammar. Sentences with multiple quantifiers are famously ambiguous with respect to their quantifier scope, representing a type of ambiguity related to, but not necessary the same as, structural ambiguity. Two key questions in the psycholinguistic study of quantification are: (i) how does the human processor assign quantifier scope? and (ii) how and under what circumstances is this scope assignment reanalysed? The investigation of these questions lies at the intersection of psycholinguistics and theoretical linguistics. The chapter summarizes both strands of research, and discusses experimental data that played an essential role in the (psycho)linguistic theorizing about the topic of processing quantification and quantifier scope.