The syntax of Clitic Left Dislocation (CLLD) has been widely debated due to its mixed properties, which in some cases indicate movement (e.g. island sensitivity, certain connectivity effects) and in other cases base generation of the CLLD-ed phrase (wide scope, lack of weak crossover). In this paper we discuss scope facts with CLLD in Greek, revealing a contrast depending on the type of quantifier. We present experimental evidence that whereas CLLD-ed plain indefinites take wide scope, CLLD-ed numerals can get a low scope interpretation. We argue that the inverse scope interpretation with CLLD-ed numerals is only apparent, presenting, in fact, an instance of split scope between the degree quantifier and the existential operator. This analysis presents evidence in favor of a movement analysis for CLLD, thus patterning with the observation that binding reconstruction is possible. At the same time, the non-availability of scope reconstruction with CLLD is attributed to stricter locality constraints which have been discussed for quantifier raising as opposed to other types of movement and dependencies.

Negation with indefinite items in English can be expressed in three ways: any-negation (I didn’t have any money), no-negation (I had no money) and negative concord (I didn’t have no money). These variants have persisted over time, with some studies suggesting that the newest variant, any-negation, is increasing at the expense of no-negation (Tottie 1991a, 1991b). Others suggest that although this variable was undergoing change in earlier centuries, it is stable in Modern English (Wallage 2017). This article examines the current state of the variability in four communities within two distinctive English-speaking regions: Toronto and Belleville in Ontario, Canada, and Tyneside and York in Northern England. Our comparative quantitative analysis of speech corpora from these communities shows that the rates of no-negation vary between Northern England and Ontario, but the variation is largely stable and primarily conditioned by verb type in a robust effect that holds cross-dialectally: functional verbs retain no-negation, while lexical verbs favour any. The social embedding of the variability varies between the communities, but they share a common variable grammar.

English some and Swedish någon have a number of ‘subidentificational’ meanings, as in English some general (or other) has been shot; it was some shooting (or something). This paper reviews those meanings and attempts to determine how many context-invariant meanings are needed in order to account for their full range of meanings in context. By explicitly setting out processes of inference generation within a Gricean framework, it is found that for a large number, only one underlying (i.e. coded) meaning is required, which in context generates inferences such as lack of speaker knowledge, recall or interest in the NP referent, regarding either its type or which entity it is. Nevertheless, not all meanings can be handled in this way and additional coded meanings are required. Two diachronic pathways are discussed via which one coded meaning might extend to another. Some conclusions relevant for future work on indefinites are drawn.