The Quantifier Questionnaire

Questions About Quantifiers: Symbolic and Nonsymbolic Quantity Processing by the Brain

“…In the quantifier literature, different ways to decide what should be considered a quantifier have been proposed, as have different classifications of quantifiers. Quantifiers can be divided with respect to their linguistic properties (A‐ and D‐quantifiers), logical definability (first‐order, e.g., “all” or “some” vs. higher‐order quantifiers, e.g., “most”), computational complexity (e.g., recognizable by finite‐automata, like “all,” or not recognizable by finite‐automata, like “an even number of”), historical reasons (e.g., distinguishing Aristotelian quantifiers “all,” “some,” “not all,” “some not”), or even combinations of these various criteria (e.g., Barwise & Cooper, 1981; Keenan, 2012; Partee, 1995; Szymanik, 2016). All these classifications turned out to be very useful in understanding the formal properties of quantifiers, formulating quantifier theories, and empirical predictions about quantifier distribution or processing.…”

“…Existential quantifiers , like “some,” “several,” “a few,” “a couple,” “a dozen,” and so on, are often considered to refer to imprecise/approximate cardinalities (Keenan, 2012). 5 The fact that they refer to imprecise cardinalities makes them potentially compatible with nonsymbolic approximate quantity representations in the brain—when someone refers to a quantity of objects as “several,” we do not know what exact quantity they have in mind, just as we cannot perceive an exact quantity when presented with a set of objects and do not count them (Barth, Kanwisher, & Spelke, 2003; Dehaene, 1997; Feigenson, Dehaene, & Spelke, 2004; Gallistel & Gelman, 1992; Halberda & Feigenson, 2008).…”

Expressing Measure in Czech (A Corpus-Based Study)

“…As a measure modifier, we only understand a modification of the expressed quantity (approximately five kilos).2 A similar division can be found in other studies on measure and quantification Gil (1993). orKeenan (2012) divide measure modifiers according to their character as adverbial or nominal-like. Similarly in Czech grammars, quantitative attribute and adverbial of measure are distinguished.…”

The mental representation of nonnumerical quantifiers: The Spatial-Linguistic Association of Response Codes (SLARC) effect.

“…Expressions such as “many students”, “three days”, “few hours”, “some cats are gray” are widely used in natural language. Differently from other referring expressions (such as “my cat” or “the red car”), these do not directly refer to objects or entities, but they quantify over members of a set (e.g., a certain amount of hours or students) or they establish a relation between different sets (Barwise & Cooper, 1981; Keenan, 2012). For instance, in the expression “some cats are gray” the quantifier “some” establishes a relation (of intersection, in this case) between the set of cats and the set of things that are gray .…”