Proportion Quantifier Interpretations of Indefinites and Endocentric Relevance Relations

We show how evidential relevance relations between restrictor predicates N and attribute predicates induce proportion quantifier interpretations of indefinite Det N. A paradigmsetting role is played by ‘Protagorean’ determiners, many and few, which intuitively designate large and small quantities, but equally express positive and negative relevance. The thesis is explicated and demonstrated within a Decision-Theoretic Semantics (Merin 1999a) and extends Mostowski's (1957) Generalized Quantifier [GQ] framework. Some puzzles about monotonicity of natural language GQs are solved, and several theses about such GQs are advanced and verified.