Open AccessBuilding superlatives from property concept expressions
Author(s) -
Mythili Me
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
proceedings of the linguistic society of america
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2473-8689
DOI - 10.3765/plsa.v2i0.4086
Subject(s) - focus (optics) , property (philosophy) , ambiguity , linguistics , syntax , computer science , natural language processing , physics , epistemology , philosophy , optics
Although the relative versus absolute ambiguity in superlatives is well established, there is no consensus regarding how the comparison classes which gives rise to these ambiguities are determined. Two factors, the LF syntax of –est and focus, have been said to determine the comparison classes. In this paper, I provide novel data from Malayalam, a language without adjectives, which require both a movement theory of superlatives and focus to derive the readings.