On fioating quantifiers in english and arabic

Abstract EN

One of the recurring questions in the literature of quantifiers has been how to provide a theoretical interpretation for the syntax of floating quantifiers that human languages exhibit.

This question becomes crucial when set within a Universalist grammar theory.

This paper attempts to account for the syntactic position of the floating quantifiers (FQ) all and its Arabic equivalent kul in ditransitive and dative clauses.

It also clarifies their symmetries and asymmetries in both English and Standard Arabic (SA).

The study will be theoretically run within the framework of Government Binding Theory of Chomsky (1996a, b), (1989), among others.

It particularly investigates the position of FQs in terms of X-bar and Case modules.

Through reflecting an identical architecture, the two languages exhibit differences in the application of quantifier stranding and Case assignment.