There’s a family of proposals now suggesting that the quantificational force for noun phrases is associated with heads situated higher in the extended projection of the clause (Beghelli and Stowell 1997, Szabolcsi 1997, Hallman 2000, Sportiche 2005). While these proposals differ in their implementation,1 all converge on the expectation that the absence of such projections limits the scope options for quantified nouns. Sportiche (2005) points out that this view may offer a way to understand why the small clause subject (SCS) in (1a) fails to take scope under the raising verb seem, in contrast to the subject raised from the infinitive in (1b).
These data were used by Williams (1983) to argue that the SCS in (1a) does not raise from a Stowellian small clause (Stowell 1983). On the view that nominal quantification is dependent...