Manfred Krifka. Quantifiers in Questions. Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics 3 (2003), 499–526.

This talk is based on Krifka (2001). Its topic is the interpretation of quantifiers in questions. I will use English data for illustration, but the phenomena to be discussed appear to be general enough to be relevant for other languages as well, at least those languages that have nominal quantifiers.\ […]\ In this talk, I have argued that quantification into question acts is possible for universal quantifiers, as these quantifiers are based on conjunction, an operation that is defined for speech acts. This explains the restriction to universal quantifiers, which are generalized conjunctions. I have developed a type system in which quantification into question acts can be described. I have argued that expressions that scope out of speech acts must be topic, which explains a number of additional observations. I have also discussed embedded questions, which, depending on the embedding verb, may allow for quantification into questions.\ Needless to say, much still has to be done. In particular, a comprehensive formal theory of speech acts in which they are treated as acts, and not as descriptions of acts with Boolean properties, has to be developed, and a theory that captures the way how such acts can be integrated within recursive, Boolean semantics.