Is 'more possible' more possible in German?
Author(s) -
Elena Herburger,
Aynat Rubinstein
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
proceedings from semantics and linguistic theory
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2163-5951
pISSN - 2163-5943
DOI - 10.3765/salt.v24i0.2717
Subject(s) - span (engineering) , life span , medicine , structural engineering , gerontology , engineering
While some modals are clearly gradable (e.g. likely ), the gradablity of possibility modals is controversial. We argue that one of the major reasons to think that possibility modals can be graded, namely the appearance of German moglich (‘possible’) and kann (‘can’) in a comparative construction involving eher , should be rethought. We argue that eher is not a simple comparative marker and propose an analysis of eher moglich in which degrees of epistemic commitment are compared, not degrees of possibility.
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