Categorization via movement: the syntax and semantics of ambos

Abstract

In order to explain the syntactic behavior and describe the meaning of the item ambos in Brazilian Portuguese, we propose, assuming the Distributed Morphology framework, (1) that the acategorial root amb- merges, in the syntactic derivation, to a D that moves from inside a full definite DP, and this D categorizes the root; (2) that amb-+D merges back to the DP which D was the head of; (3) that the lower copy of D is erased (or becomes invisible) when the derivation reaches LF; (4) that the meaning of the combination of D and amb- is defined only if the context provides a unique set of two individuals with the properties defined by the plural NP taken by ambos, and introduces a universal quantification over this set.