Internal Reading and Reciprocity

This paper first points out that the internal reading of sentences containing certain reciprocal items such as “the same” carries a reciprocal meaning. It then provides a uniform formal treatment for these items that reflects the reciprocal meaning by using the Generalized Quantifier Theory enriched by the notions of generalized noun phrases (GNPs) and raised verb phrases. The basic framework initially makes explicit use of the GNP each other, and is then refined to make each other implicit so as to be in line with the surface syntactic structure. The framework is further refined to handle cases that are different from the basic cases, including reciprocal items appearing in non-object positions, conjoined phrases containing reciprocal items, downward monotonic and non-monotonic quantifiers, weaker reciprocal meaning and non-NP triggers.