I will establish a distinction that has gone unnoticed in the previous
literature (Matthewson 01, Hackl 09, Coppock et al. 17) between two
proportional MOSTs in non-partitives. I will propose that both of the two
MOSTs are quantificational Determiners (contra Hackl’s widely assumed
superlative analysis), which nevertheless differ in semantic type: one of
them denotes relations between sets (see the GQT analysis of MOST) whereas
the other one denotes relations between entities (see Higginbotham’s 94
analysis of mass quantifiers).
carmen.sorin@linguist.univ-paris-diderot.fr