Negative Polarity Items in Definite Superlatives

The absolute/relative ambiguity of definite superlative noun phrases in English has been studied from a variety of theoretical perspectives, including seminal work by Ross (1964), Szabolcsi (1986) and Heim (1985-05, 1999). In this article, we contribute to this discussion by examining the distribution of Negative Polarity Items (NPIs) in and around superlative descriptions, especially on their relative readings. In particular, we attempt to account for the two facts below. The first, Generalization I, is not new (see, e.g., von Fintel 1999, Gajewski 2010, and Howard 2014), but to our knowledge, Generalization II has not been previously documented or analyzed. Under common assumptions about the licensing requirements of NPIs, we will show that both of these observations bear on established debates concerning the semantics and composition of phrases containing superlative adjectives.