Am I my own sibling?
Keny Chatain, Itai Bassi, Sherry Yong Chen, Filipe Hisao Kobayashi
December 2021
 

[!!! Unbeknownst to us, the same data point were discussed in more depth in Barker (1999) "Temporary Accommodation: I am the oldest of my siblings""" !!!] In a debate on logic and grammar, the medieval grammarian al-Sirafi (Margoliouth, 1905) notes that "Zaid is the tallest of his brothers" is acceptable, even though Zaid is not his own brother. In this short snippet, we complete the description of the puzzle by providing more evidence that one isn't one's own sibling and we give empirical conditions under which the puzzling reading of al-Sirafi can arise.
Format: [ pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/006315
(please use that when you cite this article)
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keywords: superlatives, partitives, relational nouns, focus, semantics
previous versions: v2 [December 2021]
v1 [August 2021]
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