Partitive accomplishments across languages

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Dancing monkeys in Serbian and Korean - exhaustivity requirements on distributive share markers

In some languages, distributive markers/quantifiers can attach to the argument that is being distributed (the distributive share), as opposed to the restrictor of the sentence (the distributive key). Researchers agree that distributive share markers can also distribute over events (and not only individuals), but disagree as to what these markers are semantically – universal distributive quantifiers or event plurality (pluractional) markers. In this paper, we experimentally probe spatial event distribution. On a universal quantification account, exhaustive distribution over a spatial distributive key is enforced, while on the pluractional analysis there is no such requirement. We carried out two picture verification experiments to test exhaustivity requirements in intransitive sentences with distributive share markers from two typologically different languages: the Serbian marker 'po' and the Korean marker -'ssik'. We found evidence for an exhaustivity requirement over pluralities of non-atomic individuals (groups), but not over designated spatial locations. We interpret these findings as evidence that the semantics of (spatial) event distribution with distributive share markers involves a (spatial) distributive key. Specifically, 'po/-ssik' have a universal quantificational force (with a meaning akin to 'per' ('each')) establishing a distributive relation between individual events and elements of the spatial distributive key. Plural individuals made salient in the visual input can serve to divide up the spatial key into chunks of space that have to be exhausted

Exhaustivity and homogeneity effects with distributive-share markers:Experimental evidence from Serbian po

There are two competing approaches to the semantics of distributive-share markers: they are either universal distributive quantifiers over events or are merely event-plurality markers. To address this debate, we present new conclusions based on novel experiments with Serbian transitive sentences in which the distributive-share marker po was attached to the direct object. The first two experiments investigated exhaustivity effects in transitive sentences with po, while the third experiment probed homogeneity effects across three types of negative transitive sentences: with po marking the object, with the distributive-key quantifier svaki (‘every’) in subject position, and with neither. If po is a universal quantifier, then it should enforce exhaustive distribution over a distributive key and remove homogeneity effects in negative sentences with a definite subject. If instead po is an event-plurality marker with no universal quantificational force, then it should neither enforce exhaustive distribution nor remove homogeneity effects in negative sentences with a definite subject. We conclude that there are two populations of Serbian speakers with systematic patterns of interpretation: one population interprets po as a universal quantifier and one population interprets po as an event-plurality marker. We conjecture that this population split might reflect an ongoing diachronic change in the semantic import of the distributive-share marker po