Deriving the most internal relative reading

Abstract

Definite-marked constructions with adnominal quantity superlatives (most, least, fewest) give rise to both NP-external and NP-internal relative readings in English, while other adnominal superlatives allow only NP-external readings. Neither the movement approach to relative superlatives (Szabolcsi 1986, Heim 1999) nor Pancheva & Tomaszewicz’s (2012) combined movement-and-in-situ approach can account for this pattern of available readings. To explain how it is derived, I propose a novel constituency for constructions with adnominal quantity superlatives, which is motivated by findings in the parallel domain of measure phrases.