Did all the boys leave or not?

Did all the boys leave or not? Quantifier-negation interaction in English Gunnel Tottie Anja Neukom-Hermann The University of Zurich Anja Neukom-Hermann: delete dash after ‚Anja‘

The interaction of negation and quantifiers is a problem All, every, some, many… • Many arrows hit the target (2) Many arrows didn’t hit the target (3) Many arrows hit the target and many arrows didn’t hit the target (4) It is not the case that many arrows hit the target

Universal quantifiers are a worse problem (5a) All the arrows didn’t hit the target (5b) Not all the arrows hit the target (some missed) (5c) All the arrows ‘not-hit’ (no arrows hit, all missed) (6a) All the boys didn’t leave (6b) Not all the boys left (some stayed) NEG-Q (6c) All the boys ‘not-left’ (no boys left, all stayed) NEG-V

Logic versus linguistics: • All the boys didn’t leave • Logicians: NEG has scope over the verb, so the correct reading is NEG-V: • All the boys not-left (no boys left, they all stayed) • Linguists: There is ambiguity; NEG-Q is possible (and more common)

Little empirical research • Carden and other generativists carried out elicitation tests to find different “dialects” • First corpus study: Josef Taglicht

Taglicht’s study: 2.5 million words The Brown Corpus (American English) The Lancaster-Oslo-Bergen Corpus (LOB; British English) The London-Lund Corpus of Spoken English (LLC; British)

There is a third reading: • All the bills don’t amount to $50 • ‘Not all the bills amount to $50 (some do)’ NEG-Q (10) ‘All the bills ‘not-amount’ to $50 (not a single one does)’ NEG-V (11) ‘All the bills together do not amount to $50’ Coll[ective]

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wallHumpty Dumpty had a great fallAll the King’s horses and all the King’s menCould not put Humpty Dumpty together again

More collective readings All the perfumes of Arabia/Will not sweeten this little hand (Macbeth) All those aspirins can’t have done you any good

The BNC study:100 million words • How frequent are all…not constructions in natural language? • Are these constructions ambiguous in context? • Which use is more frequent (NEG-Q, NEG-V or COLL)? • What are the distributions in speech and writing? • Can any factors influencing the interpretation be uncovered?

Anja Neukom-Hermann: first and third examples are not ambiguous anyway... Only all…not Not included in our study: • Every and compounds Examples where not precedes all: • Not all you say is true

No prosody! (15) \/ ‘All the men didn’t go NEG-Q (16) \ All the ‘men didn’t go NEG-V

Method • Perl script by Sebastian Hoffmann • 2,416 sentences found • Manual check • 495 relevant cases found (5 pmw) • 43 were deemed unclear • 452 examples analyzable

Anja Neukom-Hermann: 19 is indented and others aren‘t; would look nicer if they were all formatted in the same way Some genuine examples (17) We live in a fallen world. All is not true, so not everything should be believed…[NEG-Q] • …that small degree of compassion…which all men in whatever circumstance or however degraded should not be denied. [NEG-V] (19) If all that money we gave to Band Aid didn’t do the trick, it must be because there are just too many of them. [COLL]

Anja Neukom-Hermann: mention that 20 is speech? Problematic sentences • With adverbials: (20)…the hunting fraternity is not blameless and indeed the, all their arguments are notquite correct in every sense... • With more than one negative item: (21) …there was no positive proof that all this had not in fact happened, and that it did not belong to a mental lapse….

Anja Neukom-Hermann: font size of 22 and 23 is smaller than previous examples! Unclear cases • It seemed all of her father’s old acquaintances had not been too impressed by his choice of wife. [NEG-Q or NEG-V] (23)…all that we’ve done over the last 40 years is not as important as what we do next week. [NEG-V or COLL]

Figure 1. The distribution of readings of 452 all…not constructions in the BNC

Anja Neukom-Hermann: there are spaces before and after the first =, but not the second = Figure 2. Readings of all…not constructions in BNC (n = 452) and Taglicht’s study (n = 23) Anja Neukom-Hermann: see also comment in the field below

all…not constructions in speech and writing in the BNC • The entire sample (unclear included)

Fig. 3. Proportions of all…not readings in S and W in the BNC (%) Anja Neukom-Hermann: check: all titles of tables and figures either bold or not bold; here you have a dot after the title - do you really want that?? ‚%‘ doesn‘t look good alone on a new line

Figure 4. Differences between text domains (pmw)

Breaking news:two important factors influence readings: 1. Occurrence in formulaic expressions 2. The use of all as a pronoun (NP head )or a predeterminer

Anja Neukom-Hermann: I would group ‚lost‘ with ‚doom‘ since they are semantically similar, as are ‚well‘, ‚perfect‘ and ‚good‘ Some frozen expressionsare always NEG-Q Anja Neukom-Hermann: maybe delete neg-q and coll in examples here and on next slide, since title says it already Anja Neukom-Hermann: lost and well should be bold in examples as on next slide • all is not lost • all is not gloom (and doom)… • all is not well • all is not perfect • all is not good • A third aide … insisted all was not lost between Charles and Diana. • Sock Shop admitted earlier this year that all was not well with its American outlets.

Anja Neukom-Hermann: title on previous slide is neither bold nor in italics; change title on this slide Some frozen expressions are always COLL Anja Neukom-Hermann: enumeration here with dot and on previous slide with squares • all NP in the world…not • …all the marketing and computers in the world won’t help you. • … the coroner had pointed out how all the instruments in the world could not have detected it. (28)…as if all this were not enough, schools have started managing their own financial affairs.

Anja Neukom-Hermann: ‚all was not well‘ is not an example of a modified case here; choose rather ‚all may not be lost‘ (cf. liz paper) Completely frozen! • not a single instance of not all is/was lost, but 32 instances of all is/was not lost • no instances of not all is/was well, but 44 instances of all is/was not well • More if we count modified cases like all is not yet lost, all may not be lost • No frozen examples of NEG-V!

Fig. 5. Free and frozen all…not constructions Anja Neukom-Hermann: again a dot after the title - delete?

Anja Neukom-Hermann: are you going to show this? not too complicated? Table 2. FREE and FROZEN expressions in all...not constructions in the BNC Anja Neukom-Hermann: ‚Text durch Klicken hinzufügen‘: delete More frozen examples in W!

The other major factor: • The function of all as a pronoun (NP Head) or a Predeterminer • Pronoun: All is not lost • Predeterminer: All the boys did not leave • All of the boys did not leave

Fig. 6. Readings: all as pronoun or predeterminer

Fig. 7. All as pronoun or predeterminer in the BNC; frozen and free use

Anja Neukom-Hermann: insert a space after ‚complex 1:‘ NP complexity plays a part • Pronoun (bare all) All is not lost • All + N All the boys… • Complex 1: All +1 premod or 1 postmod; All the pretty horses, All the money in the world • Complex 2: All + premod and postmod All the pretty horses in the field

Anja Neukom-Hermann: ‚readings‘ in the plural? Fig 8 . Complexity and readings of all-constructions. Free and frozen uses; n=452

Anja Neukom-Hermann: ‚readings‘ in the plural? Fig. 9. Complexity and readings of all-constructions. Free uses only; n = 284

What does all this mean? • Structural, semantic and pragmatic factors contribute to the meaning of all…not sentences • Truth-functional semantics will not account for them • We need a cognitive framework like frame semantics

Many problems remain • Why do speakers use all…not constructions at all? • Why not not…all if that is what they mean? • Are things different when every and its compounds serve as the universal quantifier?

Did all the boys leave or not?