Aspects of "Too" and "Enough" Constructions

Abstract

2)Jean was clever enough to leave early This implication appears to be defeasible ((2) could be fo llowed by a sentence asserting that, for some reason, Jean didn't leave) suggesting that this inference is of a pragmatic nature.This is in fact the line pursued in Meier (2003), which argues that implicative readings like that of (2) are determined by context: the modality in (2) would involve a completely realistic accessibility relation, which only picks out the actual world, and thereby guarantees that the complement holds in the actual world.However, once we tum to the French counterpart ofT&E, we observe that this implication cannot just be pragmatic, as it is grammatically encoded.Indeed, in French, implicative readings only emerge in the Past tense 2 , with matrix perfective aspect (passe compose'), as in (4), while imperfective aspect (imparfait) gives rise to non implicative readings, as in (3).Note furthermore that the implication that arises with perfective aspect is not cancelable:(3) a. Jean Mait assez rapide pour s'enfuir (mais il ne s'est pas enfui) 'Jean was-impf quick enough to escape (but he didn't escape)' b.Jean etait trop lent pour s'enfuir (mais il s'est enfui) 'Jean was-impftoo slow to escape (but he still escaped)'

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