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This dissertation concerns the nature of Quantifier Raising (QR), a movement-based mechanism of quantificational scope-taking, and in particular the constraints that govern it. It probes this issue via examining the widely-assumed clause-boundedness of quantificational scope and counterexamples attested cross-linguistically. It argues that the clause-boundedness of quantificational scope is not absolute, but varies with the syntax and semantics of the clause-embedding configurations. The empirical motivation for this argument is grounded in two case studies on the distributions of extra-wide inverse scope readings (i) across relative clauses in Mandarin and (ii) across finite complement clauses in English, respectively. In the first case study, I observe a correspondence between the syntactic position of a relative clause and the possibility of scope-interaction across it, and propose a syntactic account for the correspondence under phase-unlocking theories. In the second case study, I argue for a correspondence between the semantics of a complement clause and its transparency to extra-wide inverse scope across it, and account for the correspondence by proposing a dichotomous semantics for complement clauses under a predicative analysis of complement clauses.
A second core claim of the dissertation is that as an operation that takes place after spell-out, QR obeys both a general locality constraint on movement and an interface condition on semantic well-formedness. The first case study on scope-islandhood of relative clauses provides an empirical motivation for QR obeying the locality constraint on movement, while the second case study on scope-islandhood of complement clauses motivates the interface condition on QR. The two constraints together require that (i) QR proceed successive-cyclically via each phase edge and (ii) each step of QR result in semantic well-formedness, e.g. not causing type-mismatch. I show that the relaxed clause-boundedness of quantificational scope follows from the interaction between the constraints on QR and the syntactic and semantic characteristics of the intervening finite clause boundary.
This dissertation also extends the proposed syntax and semantics of clause-embedding configurations to long-distance relations beyond scope-taking. With the dichotomous semantics of clausal complementation proposed in the second case study, I show that it derives an attested parallelism between cumulative readings and extra-wide inverse scope readings across complement clauses. With the syntactic account for covertly raising out of certain Mandarin relative clauses proposed in the first case study, I explore its implication on its overt counterpart, in light of the existing investigations of exceptional extraction from relative clauses cross-linguistically, and observe an apparent discrepancy between covert and overt extraction from relative clauses. I account for this discrepancy by a linearization-based analysis, and discuss implications of this analysis on the (c)overtness of movement.