Measure Phrase Equatives and Modified Numerals

Journal of Semantics Advance Access published April 18, 2014 Journal of Semantics, 0, 2014: 1–51 doi:10.1093/jos/ffu004 Measure Phrase Equatives and Modified Numerals Abstract In English, equatives can be formed with a numeral or measure phrase (MP) standard (e.g. John can dive as deep as 500m; Rett, 2010). These ‘measure phrase equatives’ (MPEs) differ semantically from their clausal counterparts (e.g. John can dive as deep as Sue can) in two important ways. First, while clausal standards set lower bounds, resulting in an ‘at least’ interpretation of the equative, MP standards tend to set upper bounds, resulting in an ‘at most’ interpretation. Second, MPEs are restricted in their distribution relative to clausal equatives: they are only acceptable when the subject is associated with a range of values or when the value they’re associated with is signifi- cantly high (or both). The main goal of this paper is a unified analysis of the equative morpheme that accounts for these semantic and distributional differences between clausal and MP equatives. I attribute these differences to the fact that MPEs can trigger two different conversational implicatures: a quantity implicature (because they are less informative than MP comparatives); and a manner implicature, because they are more marked than MP constructions like John can dive 500m (deep). I end by suggesting an expansion of this account of MPEs to modified numerals generally, in particular to the differences between Class A and Class B modifiers (Geurts & Nouwen 2007; Nouwen INTRODUCTION In English, equatives can be formed with a numeral or measure phrase (MP) standard (e.g. John can dive as deep as 500m; Rett 2010). These measure phrase equatives (MPEs) are semantically different from clausal equatives in a number of different ways. I argue here that the difference is best attributed to the fact that MPEs trigger an additional manner implicature, in contrast to clausal equatives, as a result of their relation- ship to MP constructions like John dove 500m (deep). The analysis pro- vides insight into the semantic relevance of manner implicatures; I will argue that it can also inform the discussion of modified numerals (e.g. John read fewer than 3 books) generally. I’ll begin by describing the empirical challenge posed by these measure phrase equatives. Section 1.2 outlines the approach and the organization of the article. s The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com Downloaded from http://jos.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of California, Los Angeles on April 19, 2014 JESSICA RETT University of California, Los Angeles