4.4.2. Floating quantifiers
Quantifiers do not necessarily appear close to the noun they modify. Sometimes they are separated from the noun phrase they belong to: when this happens, they are called ‘floating quantifiers’. This syntactic construction is attested in LIS.
Let us consider the nominal expression student all. In its canonical position, the quantifier all occurs close to the noun student, in postnominal position.
student all exam pass be_able
‘All the students can pass the exam.’
In related sentences, the quantifier all can be floated to three different discontinuous positions: it can appear between the object and the lexical verb (a), between the lexical verb and the modal (b), and after the modal in sentence-final position (c).
a. student exam all pass be_able
‘All the students can pass the exam.’
b. student exam pass all be_able
‘All the students can pass the exam.’
c. student exam pass be_able all
‘All the students can pass the exam.’
Interestingly, there are minimal pair sentences that have different nuances of meaning according to the syntactic status of the quantifier. For example, consider the two sentences below.
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a. friend poss1 all deaf
‘All my friends are deaf.’ (recreated from Brunelli, 2011: 54)
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b. friend poss1 all deaf
‘My friends are all deaf.’ (recreated from Brunelli, 2011: 54)
The quantifier all appears in its canonical position within the nominal expression in (a), while it falls outside the noun phrase and hence behaves as floating quantifier in (b). A close look at the non-manuals used in the two sentences helps detect this difference: when used as regular quantifier, all falls within the scope of the non-manuals marking the noun phrase (a); when used as floating quantifier, all is not accompanied by such non-manuals and it is separated from the noun phrase by an intonational break (b).
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