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Scalar additive operators, such as Engl. even, Fr. même, Germ, sogar, Sp. aun, and so forth, vary crosslinguistically in terms of their distributional behavior, in particular with respect to semantic and pragmatic properties of the sentential environment (scale-reversing vs. scale-preserving, negative vs. nonnegative). This article proposes a semantic framework for the crosslinguistic analysis of scalar additive operators and a typology based on that framework. Five major types of operators are distinguished and the distribution of these types in forty European languages is surveyed. The synchronic patterns found in the languages of the sample are interpreted in the light of historical developments in the domain of investigation, and implications for the division of labor between lexical meaning and sentential context are discussed.
The German Perfekt has two quite different temporal readings, as illustrated by the two possible continuations of the sentence Peter hat gearbeitet in i, ii, respectively:
(i) Peter hat gearbeitet und ist müde.
Peter has worked and is tired.
(ii) Peter hat gearbeitet und wollte nicht gestört werden.
Peter has worked and wanted not to be disturbed.
The first reading essentially corresponds to the English present perfect; the second can take a temporal adverbial with past time reference (‘yesterday at five’, ‘when the phone rang’, and so on), and an English translation would require a past tense (‘Peter worked/was working‘). This article shows that the Perfekt has a uniform temporal meaning that results systematically from the interaction of its three components—finiteness marking, auxiliary and past participle—and that the two readings are the consequence of a structural ambiguity. This analysis also predicts the properties of other participle constructions, in particular the passive in German.
Der Alte folgte der Leiche und die Söhne, Albert vermocht's nicht. Man fürchtete für Lottens Leben. Handwerker trugen ihn. Kein Geistlicher hat ihn begleitet.
