I provide an analysis of the relative readings of superlatives on which the superlative morpheme -est is more constrained at LF than previously argued, yet the range of superlative readings available cross-linguistically is still accounted for. I argue that -est scopes outside the superlative DP only when necessary. I also provide empirical arguments that the focus structure of the sentence must be included in the LF representation of relative readings. In English, where -est only scopes DP-internally, we correctly predict the optionality of focus for relative readings. In Polish, where -est can also scope DP-externally, focus can be obligatory to disambiguate between the different LFs.
I provide experimental evidence that quantifier semantics is transparently associated with a canonical verification strategy (Lidz et al. 2011). I tested the processing of two majority quantifiers in Bulgarian and Polish: Most1, the counterpart of English most, and Most2, meaning “the largest subset”. Three notable results have been obtained: (i) Most1 is verified by a Subtraction strategy, directly replicating the findings of Lidz et al. for Slavic; (ii) Most2 is verified by a Selection strategy in accordance with its lexical semantics; (iii) the canonical verification strategies are used even in cases where either strategy would yield the correct truth value.
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