A rate analysis of the binominal each
Linmin Zhang, NYU
Abstract
Such English sentences as "John should meet three professors" have two
readings: (i) the individual reading: there are three people that John should
meet; (ii) the cardinal reading: the number of people that John will meet
should be three (Szabolcsi 2010). These two readings are also available for
adverbial each sentences: John and Mary should each invite two celebrities.
However, different from these sentences, binominal each sentences ("John and
Mary should invite two celebrities each") have only the cardinal reading.
Moreover, apart from apparent semantic similarities between adverbial each
sentences and binominal each sentences in most cases, binominal each sentences
have many special properties both in syntax and in semantics, and most
essentially, binominal each sentences have the counting quantifier
requirement. In this paper, I will first show syntactic and semantic
differences between binominal each sentences and adverbial each sentences, and
then I will argue that the existing distributivity analyses (e.g. Balusu 2005,
Champollion 2012) for adverbial each sentences are not applicable for
binominal each sentences. Instead, I would like to draw an analogy between
"number + NP + each" and "number + km + per hour" and analyze both of these
two constructions as a rate expression.