The amount of an event in the Japanese Floating Quantifier Construction

In this paper, I discuss a collective reading of the Japanese Floating Quantifier Construction (JFQC). Adapting Kobuchi-Philip (2003) and Nakanishi (2003), I propose that the floating quantifier (FQ) measures the amount of an event if the domain of objects is non-atomic like mass-nouns and plurals. Under this analysis, the domain of objects in the collective JFQC is like that of plurals, i.e., all the sums of atomic individuals minus all the atoms. Furthermore, all the sums of individuals are mapped to singular events. Since the collective predicate does not have atomic individuals as its extension, the classifier cannot indirectly measure events by counting atomic individuals. Instead, the FQ measures the amount of an event.