Temporal adverbial superlatives in Dutch

Abstract

This paper investigates adverbial superlative expressions in Dutch that have a temporal interpretation, i.e. that contain the forms eerst ‘first’, laatst ‘latest’, and vroegst ‘earliest’. I focus on possessive superlatives and superlatives embedded under the preposition voor. Although both constructions contain bare superlatives and are interpreted temporally, they represent semantically and pragmatically different readings, and attach to the sentence in structurally different ways. I present a semantic analysis of both types of superlatives, and I show what this entails for how time adverbials interact with superlatives.