Arguing with “at least” constructions

Abstract

Based on corpus data from the Hebrew web corpus HeTenTen, I analyze the discourse argumentative functions of constructions associated with superlative minimum modifiers (e. g. at least). I adopt Kay’s (1992. At least. In Adrienne Lehrer & Eva Feder Kittay (eds.), Frames, fields, and contrasts: New essays in semantic and lexical organization, 309–331. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum) distinction between three such sub-constructions: Scalar, Rhetorical and Evaluative, but I offer further distinctions within these constructions. Most importantly, despite the differences between them, I argue that all three constructions are used to construct non-optimal, yet sufficient arguments.

‘At least’, ‘at most’ and the ‘extreme’ measure: The Russian scalar limit operator construction po + Adj + mere

“…Although the syntactic structure of these phrases remains transparent, the semantics of their nominal component, mera, is bleached. Evidently, they are no longer functionally compositional, similarly to the counterpart minimal scalar operator constructions in other languages, such as the English at least (Kay 1997(Kay , 2004Geurts and Nowen 2007;Büring 2008;Geurts et al 2010;Biezma 2013 to name a few), the French au moins/du moins (Anscombre and Ducrot 1983: 139-161;Abé 2010), the Spanish por lo menos/al menos (San Martín Núñez and Rojas Inostroza 2020), the German wenigstens/ mindestens/zumindest (Grosz 2011;Gast 2013), the Hebrew lefaxot 'at least' (Katzir 2019a), the Chinese zuishao 'at least' (Chen 2018) or the Japanese sukunakutomo 'at least' (Hirayama and Brasoveanu 2018;Ihara and Mizutani 2020).…”

“…'pragmatic superlatives' in Fauconnier [1975]). Besides context-invariant or semantic scales evoked by these items, other studies have emphasized various types of non-conventional scales (in particular, see Ducrot [1980] on argumentative scales) and ensuing discourse functions, referring to such items as maximal and minimal superlative modifiers (Katzir 2019a(Katzir , 2019b, scalar focus quantifiers (Gast 2013), scalar operators (San Martín Núñez and Rojas Inostroza 2020) or scalar limit markers (Fuentes Rodríguez 2016).…”