Evidence for a generalized quantifier semantics in the interpretation of German weak personal pronouns—a response to Elbourne (2021)

Abstract This paper is a response to Elbourne’s (Natural Language Semantics 29:579–600, 2021) observation that pronouns can take on the semantics of a quantifier in English. I refer to the pronouns discovered by Elbourne as Q-type pronouns. I provide comparable data from German and extract constraints on when the phenomenon can occur by way of crosslinguistic comparison. A further development of Elbourne’s analysis of Q-type pronouns is proposed by formalizing the notion of “anaphoric sentence”. Anaphoric sentences are marked as Given in a strong sense and require an antecedent in the immediate context (cf. Krifka in Acta Linguistica Hungarica 55(3–4):243–276, 2008). An operator § is defined that occurs in anaphoric sentences and enforces these requirements at the syntax/semantics/pragmatics interface. The constraints on Q-type pronouns are captured in terms of them having to occur in anaphoric sentences.