Some Remarks on Todo N in Brazilian Portuguese

Several syntactic and semantic properties of todo N, named bare universal phrase (BUP), and todo(s) o(s) N(s), defined universal phrase (DUP), may be explained by attributing to each quantifier phrase a semantic structure. If our semantic proposal is correct, then Peres’s (1992) claim that the presence of the definite article in the quantifier phrase is vacuous is not right. The semantic structures attributed to BUP and DUP lead to the hypothesis that todo N was not a quantifier. Such a hypothesis finds resonance in Negrão’s proporal (2002) that claims that todo N is an indefinite in Heim’s sense. Dayal’s (1998) and Saeboe’s (2001) analyses of any are used to show that todo N is a universal, not an indefinite. Moreover it is a modal. The discussion of Enç’s generalization is brought up in order to show that if considering todo as a quantifier is a better solution, then Enç’s generalization needs to be revised. Our proposal is to keep apart quantification from specificity. Specificity is given by the presence of the definite article. The quantifier itself expresses quantification. Such a proposal opens up the possibility of a class of non-specific (perhaps modal) quantifiers, of which todo N is a central example. Key-words: quantification, formal semantics, Brazilian Portuguese.