Degenerate Plurals

Abstract

We argue that the wh-mo construction in Japanese should be analyzed as an i-sum denoting degenerate plural, distinct from group denoting true plurals and from universal quantifiers. Universal quantification-like behavior we derive from an optional distributive operator that can occur with plurals as well as with wh-mo  expressions. The optionality of this operator makes it possible to account for quantificational variability in examples containing adverbs of quantification as well.