Ignorance and concession with superlative modifiers: a cross-linguistic perspective

Abstract

Superlative modifiers (SMs) are known to demonstrate an ambiguity between an epistemic reading (EPI) conveying speaker ignorance and a concessive reading (CON) conveying speaker concession. Such EPI-CON ambiguity has often been taken, implicitly or explicitly, to be a lexical coincidence. While there may be some justification for such a position when a single language is considered, we argue for an intrinsic connection between the two readings based on cross-linguistic considerations. This paper focuses on English at least and Mandarin zhi-shao as representative of superlative modifiers across a wide range of languages to propose a unified account of the two readings. The proposal builds on Biezma (2013) in relying on the role of focus and scalarity in developing a unified semantics for the two readings, but differs in capitalizing on the fact that cross-linguistically superlative modifiers use the same morphological formants as quantity superlatives. It also follows Biezma (2013) in taking pragmatic factors as crucial in deriving the variation between EPI and CON readings. Elaborating on her account, it offers a more nuanced picture of the ways in which EPI is sensitive to the question of informativity while CON relates to issues of evaluativity. The paper shows how the proposed semantics and pragmatics account for several well-known properties of superlative modifiers. It ends by noting several open issues in the literature on this topic that the current proposal sheds new light on.