Bound Variable Singular Is Underspecified: The Case of vs. .

The goal of this article is to investigate the factors that affect the acceptability and processing of . Previous research has sought to determine whether there are acceptability and processing differences between with plural vs. singular antecedents, with mixed results. The studies reported here address this question using bound variable singular (e.g., ). We asked whether bound singular is sensitive to both the morphological number and the semantic distributivity of the binding quantifier phrase. We contrasted morphologically singular quantified antecedents ( and ) with plural quantified antecedents (). Instead of finding an effect of number, we found an effect of semantic distributivity in acceptability, with bound singular demonstrating a cline of preference toward more distributive antecedents. Neither number nor distributivity, however, registered as an effect on reading times. Rather, for all types of quantified antecedents, encountering a pronoun like or rather than registered a processing delay, in contrast to non-quantified antecedents. Our results are most fully compatible with the view that is underspecified for number properties.