Triggering domain restriction

Abstract

It is well known that occurrences of sentences such as “Every bottle is empty” will sometimes be understood relative to a subset of the set of all bottles in the universe. Much has been written about what mechanism should be used to model this phenomenon of domain restriction. However, comparatively little attention has been paid to the question of when domain restriction is triggered. I will begin by challenging a recent partial answer to this question. I will then develop my own partial answer based on observations pertaining to information structure.

Against Second-Order Primitivism

“…Indeed, Shaw (2015) himself describes his proposal as introducing a new kind of quantifier domain restriction. Shaw's position is challenged by Mankowitz (2019) who argues that the quantifier in (19b) need not be restricted to the objects that have roots and that the restriction-when in force-can be generated by standard mechanisms of covert quantifier domain restriction. Regardless of mechanism, it seems appropriate to describe the quantifiers in (19c) or (20b) on the intended interpretation as restricted.…”