# Scopal and non-scopal modifiers

**URL:** <https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/t/scopal-and-non-scopal-modifiers/589>\
**Category:** Grammar Matrix\
**Tags:** mrs\
**Created:** [October 19, 2020, 7:37pm UTC](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/t/scopal-and-non-scopal-modifiers/589 "2020-10-19T19:37:38Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 11

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**Author:** ![goodmami](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/b5e925/32.png) [@goodmami](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/u/goodmami)\
**Post date:** [October 21, 2020, 12:50am UTC](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/t/scopal-and-non-scopal-modifiers/589/11 "2020-10-21T00:50:53Z")

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I tried to post this yesterday but the site went down again… I’ll put it anyway, but I think T.J. and Guy have already covered many of the same points.

* * *

Back to your original example, _The dog probably barked._, imagine it as an answer to these questions:

1. _The trick-or-treaters ran away without their candy. What happened?_  
(_probably_ scopes over _the_)
2. _Do you think the dog barked or begged at the trick-or-treaters?_  
(_the_ scopes over _probably_)

As for intersective adjectives, in my dissertation (Section 5.3.3, ~p74) I gave the following non-scopal adjective classes and examples:

- intersective: _white cat_
- subsective: _cognitive scientist_
- intensional: _fake gun_

Also this paper by Ulrich Reichard looks nice: [https://philpapers.org/archive/REIIAG.pdf](https://philpapers.org/archive/REIIAG.pdf)

I just skimmed it but it has some examples with set descriptions of the phenomena. Note that what I called “intensional” Reichard calls “non-subsective”, and also discusses another term, “privative”. It doesn’t seem to cover scopal adjectives, though.

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