The likelihood of upper-bound construals among numeral modifiers

Abstract

In this paper we show that modified numerals differ with respect to the nature of the bounds they express. We examine the numeral modifiers less/fewer than, at most and up to in a series of experiments in English and Greek, and investigate to what extent these modifiers impose an upper bound. Our results indicate that the upper-bound construal that up to gives rise to is cancellable in contrast with the uncancellability of the upper-bound construal that at most and less/fewer than give rise to. This finding is compatible with an analysis that treats the upper bound of at most and less/fewer than as part of their semantic content and the upper bound of up to as a pragmatic inference. In addition, we discuss the effect of the scalar distance between possible alternatives and the modified numeral on the likelihood and strength of the upper-bound construal.