Focus, Evaluativity, and Antonymy: A Study in the Semantics of Only and its Interaction with Gradable Antonyms

This book uncovers properties of focus association with 'only' by examining the interaction between the particle and bare (or “evaluative”) gradable terms. Its empirical building blocks are paradigms involving upward-scalar terms like 'few' and 'rarely', and their downward-scalar antonyms 'many' and 'frequently', an area that has not been studied previously in the literature. The empirical claim is that associations of the former type give rise to unexpected readings, and the proposed theor...