Multiple Event Readings and Occasional-Type Adjectives

The chapter discusses three different readings that so-called frequency adjectives (e.g. daily, frequent, occasional) have been attributed to (internal, generic, adverbial) and zooms in on one of these readings, the adverbial one. Under the adverbial reading (e.g. The occasional sailor strolled by) the adjective can be paraphrased as a sentence-level adverb and thus seemingly scopes over the entire sentence. Two competing analyses of the adverbial reading are discussed, one in terms of distributional quantification, according to which the adjective is a determiner (or is forming a complex determiner with the article), vs one in terms of distributional modification, according to which the adjective is a DP-internal modifier and its seemingly scopal behaviour is merely an illusion. The chapter ends with some considerations why both types of analyses might be needed and a discussion of some cross-linguistic implications.