When Maximality Is Not Maximally Informative: A Compositional Analysis of the Depth-Charge Illusion

Abstract

Building on existing proposals for the semantic analysis of negative antonyms [8, 19], intensional comparatives with too [11, 12], and monotonicity in comparison constructions [1, 2], we propose a compositional analysis of so-called depth-charge sentences like No head injury is too trivial to be ignored: The alleged illusion derives from the interaction of maximal informativity with the scalar properties of the degree set that underlies the standard of the comparison.