When is Situation Semantics Allowed?

Quantification over individuals seems to be all we need to capture the covariation in (1a). It has been proposed within the framework of situation semantics (Kratzer 1989) that there can also be quantification over situations. The most convincing case is that of quantificational adverbs (Berman 1987, Heim 1990, von Fintel 1994)—I will be assuming in this paper that the correct analysis of these will often involve treating them as quantifiers over situations, sometimes with an if-clause providing a restrictor. However, this raises the general question of when exactly we have quantification over situations. In particular, do normal quantifiers like every ever quantify over situations? If so, do every and the others always quantify over situations? In the next section of this paper I will give two arguments that quantifiers like every must at least occasionally quantify over situations. Then I will turn my attention to the second question above and argue that there are some configurations in which they must not be allowed to do this. I should point out before we go any further, however, that this paper presupposes some sympathy with the project of explaining donkey sentences and similar instances of anaphora by means of Etype pronouns and situation semantics (Heim 1990), and that proponents of DRT analyses will not be moved by the arguments in Section 2; there will, however, be a novel argument against DRT in Section 4.4.1