Quantification in natural language

One of the crowning jewels of formal semantics is a precise treatment of quantificational expressions such as "every linguist", "most philosophers", "exactly three physicists", etc. In this seminar, we'll learn about the prevailing approach to quantification in formal semantics: Generalized Quantifier (GQ) theory. GQ theory provides a powerful tool for studying the logical properties of quantificational expressions, and stating universal properties that all natural language quantifiers share. We'll start by studying GQ theory in the context of formal semantics, drawing readings from classical introductory texts such as Heim & Kratzer's "Semantics in generative grammar" (1998) and Partee et al's "Mathematical methods in linguistics" (1990). We'll move on to focus on how quantification is expressed cross-linguistically, drawing readings from Szabolcsi's 2010 monograph "Quantification".