A surface-scope analysis of authoritative readings of modified numerals

Abstract

A sentence like You’re allowed to draw at most three cards has a so-called authoritative reading characterized by two kinds of inference: an upper-bound inference (you’re not allowed to draw more than three cards) and a free choice inference (you’re allowed to draw any number of cards in the range [0,3]). We show that authoritative readings are available for a variety of expressions beyond just at most, and we provide the first (as far as we know) surface-scope account of such readings, building on the recursive exhaustification account of free-choice disjunction proposed by Fox (2007).