33.3243, Confs: Romance; Semantics/Spain

Tue Oct 25 08:42:03 UTC 2022

LINGUIST List: Vol-33-3243. Tue Oct 25 2022. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 33.3243, Confs: Romance; Semantics/Spain

Moderators:

Editor for this issue: Everett Green <everett at linguistlist.org>
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Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2022 08:41:24
From: Xavier Villalba [Xavier.Villalba at uab.cat]
Subject: Going Romance Workshop on Superlatives and Definiteness

Going Romance Workshop on Superlatives and Definiteness 
Short Title: SuperDef 

Date: 30-Nov-2022 - 30-Nov-2022 
Location: Bellaterra (Barcelona), Spain 
Contact: Anna Gavarró 
Contact Email: anna.gavarro at uab.catt.fr 
Meeting URL: http://filcat.uab.cat/clt/going-romance-2022/ 

Linguistic Field(s): Semantics 

Language Family(ies): Romance 
Meeting Description: 

Convenor: Lucia M. Tovena (Université Paris Cité)

Our current knowledge on superlatives stems from Szabolcsi (1986) and Heim
(1999), who have solidly established the crucial distinction between absolute
and relative/comparative readings. Concentrating on English, Heim (1999) has
proposed several possible semantic compositions, which differ depending on the
choice we make regarding the position of the superlative (SUP)
marker/functional head at LF (Logical Form): should it be interpreted in situ
or instead should we assume that it raises to a position inside the DP (for
absolute readings) and even further, outside the DP (for relative readings)?
The debate is still ongoing.

A central problem in the literature of the past 20 years is the fact that
despite their indefinite-like interpretation (Szabolcsi 1986), relative
superlatives require the definite article in English. Krasikova (2012)
proposed THE is not interpreted in D° but rather inside the DegP that in
relative superlative readings. Krasikova’s analysis is however questioned by
empirical evidence coming from languages like French or Romanian, which have a
DegP-internal THE that co-exists with THE in D° (Croitor & Giurgea 2016,
Dobrovie-Sorin 2021). Also problematic is the fact that in certain languages
THE is absent for the relative superlative reading of quantity adjectives, but
possible (or even obligatory) with quality superlatives (Coppock 2019,
Dobrovie-Sorin & Giurgea 2021). Another particularly difficult issue is the
analysis of genuinely indefinite DPs that embed superlatives, e.g. This class
has a best student. It is yet not clear whether the SUP appearing in this type
of indefinite DP, which only allows absolute readings, has the same type of
denotation as the SUP occurring in definite DPs (Herdan & Sharvit 2006). It is
interesting to observe that indefinite superlatives seem to be allowed only in
prenominal position and only if the superlative is expressed by a dedicated
form (which can be affixal as -EST in English, Germanic or Scandinavian, or a
phrasal constituent [SUP cel mai] in Romanian, formed with the definite marker
cel followed by the comparative (CMPR) marker mai)).

With very few exceptions, the literature on superlatives has mostly
concentrated on languages with dedicated superlative morphemes of the -EST
type. It is only very recently that theoreticians got interested in those
languages that lack dedicated superlative markers and where superlative
meanings are conveyed by combining definiteness marking and a comparative
(CMPR) form. All Romance languages exhibit this pattern – not exclusive to
them – but it has been shown that this morphological uniformity corresponds to
quite different syntactic configurations, depending on whether the definite
article is part of a superlative constituent (as in French postnominal
superlatives and in Romanian, see Croitor & Giurgea 2016, Dobrovie-Sorin 2021,
Dobrovie-Sorin & Giurgea 2021) or instead realizes the determiner of the
overall nominal projection (as in Ibero-Romance and Italian, see Loccioni
2018). On the semantic side, attempts have been made of building superlative
meanings based on comparatives (see Dunbar & Wellwood 2016) but definiteness
plays no part in them.

It has been recently observed that the investigation of Romance languages is
particularly interesting for predicative superlatives, which have so far
received less attention (see Loccioni 2018, 2019 on Italian, Spanish, and
French, and Croitor & Giurgea 2016 on Romanian).

Program:

Wednesday November 30th

8:30-9:00: Registration
9:00-9:30: Workshop presentation
9:30-10: Ulises Delgado Díaz. Definiteness in superlative minimizers: the case
of Spanish
10-10:30: Ion Tudor Giurgea. Superlatives & definiteness: lessons from Romance
10:30-11: Peter Hallman & Margherita Pallottino. Covert nouns & definiteness
in superlatives

11-11:30: coffee break

11:30-12: Rita Valadas. Quasi-indefinite superlative NPs in European
Portuguese
12-12:30: Nicola D’Antuono. A “favourite” topic: the semantics of preference
as superlative interpretation plus individual level predication
12:30-13: Lucia Tovena & Damien Fleury. Computing the semantic contribution of
the modal adjective in predicative modal superlatives

13-14:30: lunch break

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LINGUIST List: Vol-33-3243	
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