Comparison among degrees or individuals?: A view from Japanese 'ichiban' superlatives

Abstract

Two distinct denotations have been proposed for the superlative morpheme -est in the literature, differing in whether comparison is made among degree sets (2-place -est) or individuals (3-place -est). This paper investigates cross-linguistic evidence for this distinction. We argue that the Japanese superlative morpheme ichiban (literally ‘No.1’) exclusively employs the 3-place -est denotation, which compares individuals rather than degrees. Our empirical focus is on two types of modal superlatives in Japanese, with further implications for the (un)availability of elative superlatives and the negation of existence usage in this language.