4 Most Meanings Are Superlative

Recent research on the semantics of quantificational expressions has taken on the task of relating the truth-conditional import of quantifiers with their impact on verification procedures. In particular, the semantic analysis and verification procedures associated with the proportional quantifier most have been studied in a variety of ways in an effort to reveal the correct semantic analysis of most. This chapter presents new experimental evidence in favor of a treatment that analyzes most uniformly as a superlative construction built in the syntax, rather than a quantificational determiner with rich internal semantics that does not, however, interface with syntax any more than other lexical determiners do. The evidence comes in the form of a latent superlative reading of sentences with most in subject position, like most of the dots are blue. We show, using three different Yasutada Sudo, Hadas Kotek and Martin Hackl designed Experiments 1 and 2; Hadas Kotek and Martin Hackl designed Experiment 3; Yasutada Sudo analyzed the data. Hadas Kotek proposed the analysis and Edwin Howard and Martin Hackl developed it. Hadas Kotek and Martin Hackl with input from Edwin Howard and Yasutada Sudo, wrote the chapter. Experiments at the Interfaces Syntax and Semantics, Volume 37 Copyright r 2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0092-4563/doi:10.1108/S0092-4563(2011)0000037008 experiments involving verification tasks, that most is ambiguous in this environment between a dominant proportional reading and a latent superlative reading.