A Minimalist Approach to Pair-List Readings

A sentence can have two interpretations based on the scope of WHs and quantifiers. QR raises ambiguity at LF. May (1985) claims the drop of the requirement that sentences be disambiguated at LF. In a sentence in which WHs and quantifiers mutually c-command each other, ambiguity arises according to the scope of WHs and quantifiers at LF. This ambiguous sentence is called pair-list readings by Hornstein(1995). This paper purposes to study the configuration that supports such pair-list readings and the quantifiers that should be adjoined to IP and VP to support pair-list readings. The ECP/MBR relations concerning pair-list readings are reviewed. For pair-list readings to emerge, WHs should be functionally interpreted with a quantifier- bound pronoun. I have found that the pair-list readings can be explained in terms of the Minimalist theory.