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Daniel Büring
114-120 (complete pdf)
This paper defends a new meaning for 'at least n,' roughly 'exactly n or more than n.' The proposed interpretation -- while truth conditionally equivalent to the plain numeral 'n' -- accounts for the implicatures found in sentences with 'at least,' completely on a par with disjunction. In particular, it is shown how an otherwise elusive ambiguity 'at least' creates when combined with a universal modal can be traced to the syntactic scope of 'at least' in combination with the assumption that 'at least' triggers a local implicature -- again just like 'or' -- when embedded under a universal modal.
Published in:
Proceedings of the 26th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics
edited by Charles B. Chang and Hannah J. Haynie
Table of contents
ISBN 978-1-57473-423-2 library binding
vii+524 pages
publication date: 2008
published by Cascadilla Proceedings Project, Somerville, MA, USA