Degrees and manners as quantifying over kinds: Evidence from Dutch equatives

We provide a quantificational and compositional semantics for Dutch equatives formed with the parameter marker (PM) zo and the standard marker (SM) als , which are used for both gradable adjectives and verbs. Specifically, we propose that zo makes reference to kinds, while the SM als encodes quantificational semantics and the equative relation between two sets of kinds. We show that this accounts for the fact that zo is a cross-categorial element making reference to either degrees or manners even in non-equative constructions, while attributing quantificational semantics to als accounts for the fact that Dutch equatives show scope ambiguities in a fashion familiar in comparative constructions. We also situate Dutch in a cross-Germanic typology by comparing it to English and German, showing that extant analyses in these languages will not suffice to account for the Dutch facts, whereas the analysis we shall propose for Dutch does not directly apply to English or German either. This therefore argues for a non-uniform conception of the notions of degrees and manners, where they can be semantic primitives that the grammar manipulates directly or as emergent properties based on other primitives like events and states, both across and within languages.