Relative superlatives and Deg-raising

Abstract

We address the ongoing debate between raising and in-situ analyses of relative superlatives. We present some arguments in favor of the in-situ analysis of DP-internal relative superlatives: first, the in-situ analysis accounts straightforwardly for the use of the definite article; we show that a recent attempt to explain the use of THE under the raising analysis makes incorrect predictions. Secondly, there is evidence that only a sub-type of relative superlatives, that have certain peculiar properties, rely on raising; crucially, these superlatives lack the definite article. This divide among relative superlatives has first been proposed by Pancheva & Tomaszewicz (2012) for certain adnominal superlatives. We add another context which supports this divide — the predicative context, where relative superlatives which can only be interpreted by raising to the vicinity of the correlate can be found. Based on new data coming from Romanian, we show that these predicative superlatives have different properties from DP-internal relative superlatives, which can be explained if the former involve raising and the latter are interpreted DP-internally.

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