Scope and relative measurement in Mandarin

Abstract

It is well known that the scope of quantifiers is not uniform: different quantifiers exhibit different scope properties. This paper examines the scope of a relatively understudied quantificational DP—relative measure phrases that contain proportional number expressions like 40%, one third, half, etc and relate one quantity to another. Based on relative measurement constructions in Mandarin, I observe that a relative measure phrase exhibits distinct scope patterns when it participates in the so-called ‘conservative’ and ‘non-conservative’ reading (terminology from Ahn & Sauerland (2017)). I pursue a decompositional analysis to account for the scopal difference: a relative measure phrase is decomposed into a degree quantifier denoted by the proportional number expression and a counting quantifier. A proportional number expression can take DP-internal scope or DP-external scope. Different scope taking strategies face different constraints, which in turn give rise to distinct scope possibilities.