Revisiting the logic in language: The scope of each and every universal quantifier is alike after all

A doubly-quantified sentence like Every bear approached a tent is ambiguous: Did every bear approach a different tent, or did they approach the same tent? These two interpretations are assumed to be mentally represented as logical representations, which specify how the different quantifiers are assigned scope with respect to each other. Based on a structural priming study, Feiman and Snedeker (2016) argued that logical representations capture quantifier-specific combinatorial properties (e.g., the specification of every differs from the specification of each in logical representations). We re-examined this conclusion by testing logical representation priming in Dutch. Across four experiments, we observed that priming of logical representations emerged if the same quantifiers are repeated in prime and target, but also if the prime and target contained different quantifiers. However, logical representation priming between quantifiers emerged less consistently than priming within the same quantifier. More specifically, our results suggest that priming between quantifiers emerges more robustly if the participant is presented with quantifier variation in the prime trials. When priming between quantifiers emerged, however, its strength was comparable to priming within the same quantifier. Therefore, we conclude that logical representations do not specify quantifier-specific biases in the assignment of scope.