Séminaire de Recherche en Linguistique

I will discuss puzzles surrounding the scope of only which bear on its syntax and semantics. (1) is traditionally analyzed as in (2a), where only composes directly with the DP to form a single quantifier “only one movie” (e.g. Rooth 1985). I will argue for the analysis in (2b) instead. Overt only in (1) realizes a semantically inert focus marker (F) whose morphology is due to concord with a covert propositional operator (ONLY) on the clausal spine (building on Bayer 1996, 2018, 2020, Lee 2004, Horvath 2007, Barbiers 2014, Hole 2015, 2017, i.a.). We will see that only and the DP do not pattern like a single quantifier for scope and, moreover, that only constructions exhibit scope restrictions characteristic of concord phenomena more generally.