Quantifiers and Focus

This paper concerns a neglected but potentially important aspect of natural language quantifiers. Certain quantifiers serve to identify various proportions of sets. Thus few, for example, identifies a smaller proportion of a set than many. However, different quantifiers may serve to identify similar proportions, yet produce somewhat different representations when they are used. The distinction between few and a few is considered in some detail, along with related expressions. It is claimed that these expressions serve to put into focus different subsets of the supersets upon which they operate. It was suspected that while a few X do y puts emphasis on the small subset of X of which “do Y” is true (the “refset”), with few X do Y, emphasis is put on that large, complement, subset of which “do Y” is taken to be not true. This suspected difference in emphasis is revealed by considering the acceptability of pronominal reference in subsequent sentences to the set partitions which result from using these quantifiers. In order to test these tentative observations, a large number of subjects was examined using a sentence continuation procedure. This allowed for a detailed analysis of the preferred patterns of anaphoric reference to subsets partitioned by quantifiers. The major conclusions were that few, very few, and not many put emphasis on the complement set, while a few and only a few put emphasis on the refset. Furthermore, the pattern of continuation content was markedly different for these two groups. Additional results are described in which it is shown how connectives influence this picture. It is argued that quantifiers not only identify different proportions, but that they differentially emphasize the subsets which they generate, and can function as “comments” on these proportions. Possible theoretical relations with negativity and affectivity are discussed.