Speaker: Johanna Alstott (MIT)
Title: Before and after decomposing first and last
Time: Thursday, September 14th, 12:30pm – 2pm
Location: 32-D461
Abstract: First and last have been variously described as ordinals (Bhatt 2006; Bylinina et al. 2014), superlatives (Sharvit 2010), or “both ordinals and superlatives” (Charnavel 2022). These descriptions are generally loose and undefended, and those who label first and last as superlatives do not present and argue for a particular decomposition. Thus, first and last’s status as ordinals vs. superlatives and their internal composition remain open issues. In this work, I argue that first and last are superlatives, in particular the superlative forms of before and after. As evidence that first and last are superlatives, I show that they pattern like superlatives and unlike ordinals (second, third, etc.) with respect to plurality, modifier choice, modal superlatives with possible, and the ordinal superlative construction. I next argue that the relations between before and first and between after and last show themselves overtly in paraphrases and the etymology of first; furthermore, first and last semantically differ in ways that before and after have also been noted to differ. Formalizing the proposed decomposition of first and last necessitates either a (non-standard) treatment of before and after as comparatives or a treatment of superlatives that is non-standard in semantics but standard in morphosyntax (Bobaljik 2012). I survey evidence that could adjudicate between the two strategies for decomposing first and last, arguing that the latter is more plausible.