High and low readings in indicative donkeys

Abstract

In this paper, we extend existing accounts of high and low readings in counterfactual donkey sentences (van Rooij 2006, Walker and Romero 2015) to indicative donkey sentences. First, we generalize the account to indicative donkey sentences featuring modals that employ ordering sources. Then, we turn to indicative donkey sentences with adverbs of quantification. We discuss the relationship between high and low readings arising when a similarity measure is involved and symmetric and asymmetric readings arising with adverbs of quantification (Kadmon 1987) and present tentative data that suggests that they are two closely related phenomena.