caa a22 4500 606154302 CHVBK 20210128100558.0 cr unu---uuuuu 210128e20151001xx s 000 0 eng 10.1007/s10988-015-9175-y doi (NATIONALLICENCE)springer-10.1007/s10988-015-9175-y Far from obvious: the semantics of locative indefinites [Elektronische Daten] [Sela Mador-Haim, Yoad Winter] Simple locative sentences show a variety of pseudo-quantificational interpretations. Some locatives give the impression of universal quantification over parts of objects, others involve existential quantification, and yet others cannot be characterized by either of these quantificational terms. This behavior is explained by virtually all semantic theories of locatives. What has not been previously observed is that similar quantificational variability is also exhibited by locative sentences containing indefinites with the ‘a' article. This phenomenon is especially problematic for traditional existential treatments of indefinites. We propose a solution where indefinites denote properties and are assigned locations similarly to other spatial descriptions. This Property-Eigenspace Hypothesis accounts for the correlation between the interpretations of locative indefinites and the pseudo-quantificational effects with simple entity-denoting NPs. Thereby, the proposal opens up a new empirical domain for property-based theories of indefinites, with implications for the analysis of collective descriptions, generics, negative polarity items and part-whole structure. The Author(s), 2015 Indefinite nationallicence NP nationallicence Locative nationallicence PP nationallicence Property nationallicence Eigenspace nationallicence Mador-Haim Sela University of Pennsylvania, 19104, Philadelphia, PA, USA aut Winter Yoad Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands aut Linguistics and Philosophy Springer Netherlands 38/5(2015-10-01), 437-476 0165-0157 38:5<437 2015 38 10988 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-015-9175-y text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 Metadata rights reserved Springer special CC-BY-NC licence nationallicence 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-springer NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-015-9175-y text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Mador-Haim Sela University of Pennsylvania, 19104, Philadelphia, PA, USA aut NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Winter Yoad Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands aut NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Linguistics and Philosophy Springer Netherlands 38/5(2015-10-01), 437-476 0165-0157 38:5<437 2015 38 10988