Modal Superlatives and 3-place vs. 2-place -est * I

Superlative sentences with modal modifiers like possible give rise to the so-called ‘modal superlative reading’ (Larson 2000, Pancheva 2005). The present paper uses this reading to investigate an open issue in degree constructions: whereas two different lexical entries have been argued to exist for the comparative morpheme -er (3-place and 2-place), it is not clear whether two entries are needed for the superlative morpheme -est. The paper argues that, with 3-place -est, otherwise unmotivated syntactic material would to have to be postulated and that, even with this material, not all modal superlative examples would be assigned correct truth conditions. In contrast, 2-place -est can generate the modal superlative reading in all the cases, as shown in Romero (to appear, under review). Modal superlative sentences, thus, provide evidence that 2-place -est is needed in the grammar.