On Ever-Words in Superlative Contexts in Catalan and Portuguese

In this paper, I discuss Polarity Items (PIs) occurring in superlative contexts (ever-words) and their evolution in Catalan and Portuguese. First, I discuss these items in these languages: mai in Catalan, jamais (as compared to nunca ‘never’) in Portuguese, and the more recently use of já in Brazilian Portuguese and de sempre in European Portuguese. Following that, I present the diachronic evolution that these expressions underwent as reported in the literature: some items disappeared in superlative contexts, others developed homophony and are used in semantic and in syntactic dependencies, and the more recent ones appear only as dependent on the semantic context of superlatives. Finally, I comment on the contribution that these data may bring to the debate on the directionality of change.