{"id":16823,"date":"2025-02-10T06:10:36","date_gmt":"2025-02-10T11:10:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whamit.mit.edu\/?p=16823"},"modified":"2025-02-09T20:18:26","modified_gmt":"2025-02-10T01:18:26","slug":"johanna-published-in-natural-language-semantics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/2025\/02\/10\/johanna-published-in-natural-language-semantics\/","title":{"rendered":"Alstott published in Natural Language Semantics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We are delighted to announce the publication in Natural Language Semantics of\u00a0 (third year PhD student)\u00a0Johanna Alstott&#8217;s paper &#8220;<i data-olk-copy-source=\"MessageBody\">First<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0<i>last<\/i>\u00a0as superlatives of\u00a0<i>before<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0<i>after<\/i>&#8221;. Congratulations Johanna!! Here&#8217;s the abstract:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><i>First<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0<i>last<\/i>\u00a0have been variously described as ordinals, superlatives, or both. These descriptions are generally not accompanied by extensive argumentation, and those who label\u00a0<i>first<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0<i>last<\/i>\u00a0as superlatives do not present and argue for a particular decomposition. Thus,\u00a0<i>first<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0<i>last<\/i>\u0092s status as ordinals vs. superlatives and their internal composition remain open issues. In this paper, I argue that\u00a0<i>first<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0<i>last<\/i>\u00a0are superlatives, in particular the superlative forms of\u00a0<i>before<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0<i>after<\/i>. To argue that\u00a0<i>first<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0<i>last<\/i>\u00a0are superlatives, I show that they pattern like superlatives and unlike ordinals (<i>second<\/i>,\u00a0<i>third<\/i>, etc.) with respect to plurality, modifier choice, \u0093modal superlatives\u0094 with\u00a0<i>possible<\/i>, and the ordinal superlative construction. I next argue that the relations between\u00a0<i>before<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0<i>first<\/i>\u00a0and between\u00a0<i>after<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0<i>last<\/i>\u00a0show themselves overtly in many languages and in English paraphrases; furthermore,\u00a0<i>first<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0<i>last<\/i>\u00a0semantically differ in ways that\u00a0<i>before<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0<i>after<\/i>\u00a0have also been noted to differ. While I acknowledge one observation that\u00a0<i>prima facie<\/i>\u00a0counterexemplifies these claims, I argue that it constitutes a genuine counterexample only if one formalizes my decomposition of\u00a0<i>first<\/i>\/<i>last<\/i>\u00a0using a standard Heimian (Heim in Notes on superlatives. Manuscript, MIT (1999)) entry for\u00a0<i>-est<\/i>. The counterexample, which concerns the \u0093upstairs\u00a0<i>de dicto<\/i>\u0094 reading of superlatives, ceases to be an issue if one treats\u00a0<i>before<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0<i>after<\/i>\u00a0as simplex and formalizes my decomposition using a Containment Hypothesis-inspired semantics (Bobaljik in Universals in comparative morphology: Suppletion, superlatives, and the structure of words, MIT Press, Cambridge,\u00a02012) for\u00a0<i>-est<\/i>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Natural Language Semantics is an open-access journal so everyone can access the paper here:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/journal\/11050\">https:\/\/link.springer.com\/journal\/11050<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We are delighted to announce the publication in Natural Language Semantics of\u00a0 (third year PhD student)\u00a0Johanna Alstott&#8217;s paper &#8220;First\u00a0and\u00a0last\u00a0as superlatives of\u00a0before\u00a0and\u00a0after&#8221;. Congratulations Johanna!! Here&#8217;s the abstract: First\u00a0and\u00a0last\u00a0have been variously described as ordinals, superlatives, or both. These descriptions are generally not accompanied by extensive argumentation, and those who label\u00a0first\u00a0and\u00a0last\u00a0as superlatives do not present and argue for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-student-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16823"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16855,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16823\/revisions\/16855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}