Distributivity and Additivity: The Case of the Romanian Distributive Marker "câte"

Abstract

The paper explores the semantic import of Romanian nominal distributive marker “câte” and identifies two distinct contributions to the interpretation of the DP hosting it: a licensing condition excluding non-distributive interpretations and an additivity implicature requiring that the distributive share should be monotonic with respect to the sortal key. The latter property can only be tested when the marker modifies measure phrases. For this purpose, an experiment was conducted in order to test the hypothesis that the association between “câte” and non-monotonic measure phrases correlates with a significantly lower acceptability as opposed to “câte” and monotonic measure phrases.