Most Wanted

Abstract

On the standard, neo-Gricean view, most is semantically lower bounded but may give rise to the meaning "not all" through scalar implicature (Horn (1972)). More recent proposals have claimed that most does not generate a scalar implicature but is semantically both lower and upper bounded (Ariel (2004; in press)). In this article, we investigate the interpretation of most experimentally to evaluate these competing semantic and pragmatic accounts. We focus on a comparison of most and half because, on the classical view, half and other exact determiners should admit bilateral interpretations more readily than the upward-oriented most (Horn (in press)); however, no such difference should exist if most is both lower and upper bounded. We find that (i) in nonbiasing contexts, adults are more likely to treat most as being compatible with all than half ; (ii) a similar asymmetry emerges in children's interpretations of the two determiners; and (iii) adults adjust the higher boundary of the interpretation of most according to context-driven expectations. Taken together, these results support the classical, lower bounded, semantic analysis of most over recent revisions. Our findings also raise important issues about children's initial conjectures about scalar quantifiers and the development of the semantics-pragmatics interface.