Quantification Galore

Perhaps the most influential understanding of how reference to kinds varies across languages is that of Chierchia (1998). In this framework, determiners can in principle apply to kinds and NPs can in principle denote them. English, like other Germanic languages, is taken to realize the latter possibility. One might reasonably expect, then, that it would also realize the former—that is, that it would include a determiner that combines specifically with kind-denoting NPs. This squib argues that it does. It examines the grammar of galore, a peripheral but nonetheless widely-attested postnominal expression that has precisely this characteristic. Two important caveats need to be issued at the outset. First, judgments involving galore vary in subtle ways across speakers. I have tried to focus on clear-cut cases. Second, there are several independent complexities involved in the grammar of galore that I will need to set aside. One is a resistance to subject positions (??Boulders galore rolled down the hill). Another is a resistance to heavy NP complements reminiscent of how attributive adjectives behave (??boulders of solid granite galore; cf. *a proud of his children father). I will, however, have a little to say about galore’s expressive meaning and its status as a positive polarity item. I provide an overview of the relevant part of Chierchia’s proposal in section 2. I then examine the semantics of galore in section 3 and its syntax in section 4.