A formal semantic analysis of Spanish quantifier prefixes 'multi'- and 'pluri'-

Abstract

In this paper, I develop a formal semantic analysis of the Spanish quantifier prefixes multi- and pluri-. The analysis is designed to account for two empirical observations. First, multi- and pluri- give rise to three distinct quantificational effects: they can yield predicates that apply to objects with an internally complex structure, they can form predicates that denote pluralities of entities that are related to another referent, and they can quantify over arguments in the semantics of the base, when such arguments are available. Second, pluri- differs from multi- in that, in addition to quantifying, it imposes the condition that the members of the sets it introduces are of different kinds. Since this work aims to contribute to the literature on word-level quantification, and given the relevance of Wągiel (2020, 2022) in this area, I briefly compare the semantic effects of the quantifier prefixes with those of multipliers (expressions with similar quantificational effects), as well as the analyses proposed for these elements. I conclude the paper by discussing the theoretical implications of the proposed analysis.