Quantificational variability effect (QVE) is the intuitive equivalence of certain sentences with quantificational adverbs (Q-adverbs) and sentences without these, but with quantificational determiner phrases (DP) in argument position instead.

• 1. (a) A cat is usually smart. (Q-adverb)
• 1. (b) Most cats are smart. (DP)
• 2. (a) A dog is always smart. (Q-adverb)
• 2. (b) All dogs are smart. (DP)

Analysis of QVE is widely cited as entering the literature with David Lewis

David Kellogg Lewis

David Kellogg Lewis was an American philosopher. Lewis taught briefly at UCLA and then at Princeton from 1970 until his death. He is also closely associated with Australia, whose philosophical community he visited almost annually for more than thirty years...

' "Adverbs of Quantification" (1975), where he proposes QVE as a solution to Peter Geach

Peter Geach

Peter Thomas Geach is a British philosopher. His areas of interest are the history of philosophy, philosophical logic, and the theory of identity.He was educated at Balliol College, Oxford...

's donkey sentence

Donkey sentence

Donkey sentences are sentences that contain a certain type of anaphora, such as:* Every farmer who owns a donkey beats it.* Every police officer who arrested a murderer insulted him....

 (1962). Terminology, and comprehensive analysis, is normally attributed to Stephen Berman's "Situation-Based Semantics for Adverbs of Quantification" (1987).

External links

Core text

• Lewis, David
  David Kellogg Lewis
  David Kellogg Lewis was an American philosopher. Lewis taught briefly at UCLA and then at Princeton from 1970 until his death. He is also closely associated with Australia, whose philosophical community he visited almost annually for more than thirty years...
  
  . 'Adverbs of Quantification'. In Formal Semantics of Natural Language. Edited by Edward L Keenan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  Cambridge University Press
  Cambridge University Press is the publishing business of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII in 1534, it is the world's oldest publishing house, and the second largest university press in the world...
  
  , 1975. Pages 3–15.

Other texts available online

• Endriss, Cornelia and Stefan Hinterwimmer. 'The Non-Uniformity of Quantificational Variability Effects: A Comparison of Singular Indefinites, Bare Plurals and Plural Definites'. Belgian Journal of Linguistics 19 (2005): 93–120.

Literature

Core texts

• Berman, Stephen. The Semantics of Open Sentences. PhD thesis. University of Massachusetts Amherst
  University of Massachusetts Amherst
  The University of Massachusetts Amherst is a public research and land-grant university in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States and the flagship of the University of Massachusetts system...
  
  , 1991.
• Berman, Stephen. 'An Analysis of Quantifier Variability in Indirect Questions'. In MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 11. Edited by Phil Branigan and others. Cambridge: MIT Press
  MIT Press
  The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts .-History:...
  
  , 1989. Pages 1–16.
• Berman, Stephen. 'Situation-Based Semantics for Adverbs of Quantification'. In University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers 12. Edited by J. Blevins and Anne Vainikka. Graduate Linguistic Student Association (GLSA), University of Massachusetts Amherst
  University of Massachusetts Amherst
  The University of Massachusetts Amherst is a public research and land-grant university in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States and the flagship of the University of Massachusetts system...
  
  , 1987. Pages 45–68.

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