Quantification and Aspect

Abstract

This paper brings forward new data in support of the aspect feature structure defined in Di Sciullo (1997) on the basis of Romance languages. We show that prefixes encoding terminativity (internal [T]) impose a specific reading not only on determinerless DPs in languages like Russian, Czech and Polish, but also on overtly unspecified cardinality DPs as in Bulgarian. Furthermore, only a subset of Bulgarian prefixes are identified as capable of encoding the internal [T] feature. We argue against the traditional view that Slavic perfective prefixes are a homogeneous group. Outside the VP-level, specific readings of DPs provide evidence for another terminative (external [T]) feature taking asymmetric scope over arguments (subjects as well as objects). We propose that A-quantification, [T] calculus, and its effect on D-quantification, are obtained compositionally given the configurational asymmetry between external [T] and internal [T] in phrase structure. We refer to this hypothesis as the [T]/[T] asymmetry hypothesis. One desirable consequence of this hypothesis is that it allows for the elimination of AspP in the derivation of linguistic expressions.