Exceptional-Scope Indefinites and Domain Restriction

Abstract

This paper argues that the apparent exceptional scope behaviour of indefinites can be accounted for just by supposing a unitary analysis of indefinites as existential quantified noun phrases. It is argued that it is consistent with the meaning and use of quantificational indefinite noun phrases that, on occasion, their domain is implicitly contextually restricted by an identifying condition which the speaker has in mind. In order to explicate what the idea of having such things ‘in mind’ might amount to, some proposals in Perry (2001) are drawn on. The account is extended to deal with intermediate scope effects.