Polymorphic distributivity

Abstract

This article describes a novel pattern of interpretations associated with universal determiners like ‘each’ and ‘every’. It is demonstrated that these canonically distributive quantifiers can give rise to surprising collective readings when they quantify into sub-clausal constituents, especially other Determiner Phrases. For instance, ‘two cards from each player’ can be understood to pick out a single assorted deck of cards, one whose contents co-vary with the players. Yet this deck as a whole may be said to participate in a range of collective activities (being shuffled together, being traded en masse, not fitting into a standard pack, etc.). Such examples are shown to differ from more familiar cumulative readings of the same quantifiers. A compositional analysis is offered that generalizes Krifka’s (2001) method of quantification into speech acts in order to accommodate quantification into a larger class of non-truth-denoting semantic objects, including in these cases, entities.