Crosslinguistic Semantics

This study is part of a wider research pursued over the years and still in progress, whose aim is to highlight patterns of cross-linguistic
encoding through the interpretation of divergences in cross-linguistic categorization. The interaction among "language", "category" and "classification" is investigated along with the role of "fuzziness" (or rather "vagueness"). The extent of "context" in disambiguation and translatability is taken into consideration as is the role of "scripts and frames". A further examination of the "deictic pivot" (partly introduced in Nannini 2018) as one of the features outlining "spaces of codified knowledge" is also investigated.

This is the second in a pair of papers that aim to provide a comprehensive analysis of the semantic phenomenon of distributivity in natural language. This paper describes and explains observable cross-linguistic differences in overt distributive items in the framework of Neo-Davidsonian algebraic event semantics. The previous paper, Champollion 2016, postulated two covert distributivity operators, D and Part, in the grammar, even though the semantic effects of D can be subsumed under the workings of Part. This paper motivates the split by arguing that distance-distributive items across languages are in essence overt versions of these operators. For example, English 'each' lexicalizes D while German 'jeweils' lexicalizes Part. For this reason, 'jeweils' occurs in a wider range of distributive environments, including distribution over salient occasions. The proposed analysis explains why distributive items that can also be used as determiners, such as 'each' and 'every', never allow distribution over occasions. It also accounts for the ability of these determiners to take part in cumulative readings and to interact with nondistributive event modifiers. The paper and its companion include an explicit proposal for the compositional process in event semantics.