This extended collection of papers is the result of putting recent ideas on quantification to work on a wide variety of languages.

This study provides a unified theory of properties, relations, and propositions (PRPs). Two conceptions of PRPs have emerged in the history of philosophy. The author explores both of these traditional conceptions and shows how they can be captured by a single theory.

Presents a series of generalizations of distributivity operators across a type hierarchy, in order to account for collective-distributive ambiguities for non-subject arguments.

This thesis proposes that the English progressive semantically modifies the relation between events and times, and that this semantics uniformly underlies a variety of apparently disparate readings of the progressive. Chapter 2 begins with Jespersen's observation that the progressive presents an event as a temporal frame around a given time. I demonstrate that the temporal frame reading is not an entailment of the progressive but arises by implicature; the existence of an event of greater duration than the framed time t (...) is implicated but not entailed. I also show that restrictions on the framed time t proposed elsewhere, claiming that t must be an instant, or that t must be non-initial and non-final in t$\sp\prime$, are incorrect. ;In Chapter 3 I address certain problems with the progressive of state predicates, including habituals. Having argued that the progressive is not ill-formed or false with state predicates per se, I offer an account of the temporary or limited duration reading of progressive state predicates in terms of the implicature outlined in Chapter 2 for the progressive/non-progressive contrast in the present tense. I argue that where a simple tense state predicate has the individual-level reading, the progressive form implicates temporariness because it explicitly dates or temporally locates the state described. I argue that certain psychological state predicates resist the progressive because the explicit dating of a state or event expressed by the progressive is anomalous. ;A very old traditional observation, holding that the progressive is a "definite tense", contrasting with the "indefinite" perfect, is addressed in Chapter 4. I argue for a quantificational analysis of the novelty and familiarity effects, and claim that the original definite/indefinite classification of verb forms should be captured by differences in the quantification over times. ;In Chapter 5 I discuss the Imperfective Paradox, and the two main types of response to it. I argue that certain inadequacies indicate the correctness of the second view, which holds that the paradox is only apparent, as the predicate found in a progressive sentence is not the same as the predicate in the corresponding non-progressive sentence. (shrink)