Building superlatives from property concept expressions

Syntax, 2008

The standard view of superlatives treats them as a subkind of adjectives. However, in many languages, superlatives require the presence of a determiner, even in the predicate position. This leads to an apparent contradiction, since it is independently known that determiners syntactically combine with extended NP projections and are excluded with APs. This issue is resolved if superlative adjectives always appear in an attributive (modificational) position. Superlative phrases without an overt noun (e.g., in the predicative position) modify a null head noun. I show that this hypothesis immediately explains the restrictions on the distribution of superlatives in languages as diverse as Russian, French, German, Dutch, Breton, Spanish and Portuguese. I propose that the modificational nature of superlative adjectives can be derived from their semantics, and I argue that such a proposal yields a natural explanation of the behavior of superlatives in Hebrew and Persian. Finally, I discuss the interaction between this theory and the standard, movement-based analyses of comparatives and superlatives and provide an explanation for apparent counterexamples.

Language

This paper reports on the results of a broad cross-linguistic study on the semantics of quantity words such as many in the superlative (e.g. most). While some languages use such a form to express both a relative reading (as in Gloria has visited the most continents) and a proportional reading (as in Gloria has visited most continents), the vast majority do not allow the latter, though all allow the former. Absolute readings for the superlatives of ordinary gradable adjectives, in contrast, are universal. We offer an explanation for this cross-linguistic generalization, centered around two core assumptions: quantity words denote gradable predicates of degrees, while proportional readings involve a comparison class of individuals. We argue that proportional readings arise in rare cases when the former assumption is violated.

Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie occidentale

The goal of this paper is to reconcile the definite marking with the indefinite-like semantics of those superlatives that take a relative/comparative reading. Following Szabolcsi (1986) and Heim (1999), we will assume that the difference between absolute and relative readings of superlatives is represented at the syntactic level of semantic representation, LF (Logical Form). We will however depart from Heim’s hypothesis that what raises at LF is the superlative operator itself (EST). We will instead assume a quantificational-determiner analysis of EST, which involves two raising operations at LF: EST-raising to Spec,DP and raising of the whole superlative DP (Determiner Phrase) to a scope position in the sentence. We will examine the relative readings of quality superlatives. The generalizations and the proposed analysis are not assumed to extend to quantity superlatives.

Lingua, 2004

We provide an account of the morpho-syntax and semantics of property concept denoting expressions in Malayalam. We suggest that property concepts are lexicalized as uncategorized roots. Depending on the category of the functional heads they merge with, they participate in two types of predication. Both types are based on possession, overtly or covertly expressed. Our results add to recent work by Francez and Koontz-Garboden (2013) concerning variation in the lexicalization and grammar of property concepts cross-linguistically.

Proceedings of the 2006 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing - EMNLP '06, 2006

In this paper we introduce an empirical approach to the semantic interpretation of superlative adjectives. We present a corpus annotated for superlatives and propose an interpretation algorithm that uses a wide-coverage parser and produces semantic representations. We achieve Fscores between 0.84 and 0.91 for detecting attributive superlatives and an accuracy in the range of 0.69-0.84 for determining the correct comparison set. As far as we are aware, this is the first automated approach to superlatives for open-domain texts and questions.

University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, 2015

American Journal of Applied Linguistics (AJAL), 2020

This research seeks to identify the variations in Adjective Phrase with Double Comparatives and Double Superlatives in PakE, and investigate the influence of the substrate linguistic effect of Urdu language on PakE. For this study, a recently released corpus – GlowbE-PK was utilized. 20 Adjective phrases with double comparatives and double superlatives in PakE were selected from thousands of concordance lines and a large amount of text. This study utilized the mixed method research and also kept in view the Sociolinguistic Variation and World Englishes conventions of research. The Frequency of each token (phrase), and then accumulative and average frequencies were also given. It was an interesting fact to know that ‘More better’ token displayed the maximum frequency of 0.92, and five other tokens – ‘More smaller’, Most clearest’, ‘Most oldest’, ‘Most prettiest’ and ‘Most smallest’ displayed the minimum frequency of 0.02. The results and discussions indicated the noticeable variation in the Adjective phrase of PakE from Standard English. This research also confirms the linguistic influence of substrate language Urdu on Pakistani English, however without denying the other factors that can influence and cause the variation in the use of Pakistani English. These investigations and findings clearly demonstrate the success of the objectives of this research. **Statement** **Dear scholars, Dr. Allison Qiu is a director at Journal of American Academic Research, USA (JAAR publishing center): www.american-journals.com **She is also the administrator for the Academia account at JAAR publishing center, so she is not one of the authors of any listed articles (published at JAAR) at Academia. **Please don't misunderstand it because her name will show in all articles ( published at JAAR publishing center) listed in Academia. ​

There is a point of similarity between English suffixal superlatives and English past tense. There is the question whether or not comparative -er should be decomposed in parallel fashion to superlative -est, and how that fits in with FOFC effects. And then there is the importance of all the contrasts between 'most' and 'least'.

Proceedings of SALT X, 2000