Pluractional Quantifiers: The occasional-construction in English and German

I investigate a syntactic construction which raises an interesting question for  compositionality: An adjective seems to be interpreted outside its containing DP,  taking scope over the entire sentence. With Larson (1999), I assume that the  adjective incorporates into the DP-determiner, forming a complex quantifier. I  present independent evidence in favour of such an analysis. Furthermore, I argue  that Larson' s semantic account of D-A-incorporation is in need of revision. I  propose an alternative, more empirically adequate analysis which treats D+ A  composites as Lasersohnian  (1995) pluractional quantifiers.

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