Craig,
As you're aware from both your functional and your cognitive work, what we would normally say depends entirely on situation. It wouldn't be hard to come up with a suitable context, say, a murder investigation trying to narrow down who saw the victim last. I'm not sure there is a "normal" in sentence structure, at least not in the sense I think you're using the term. As Susan Schmerling put it a long time ago in her dissertation on intonation, "There is no normal sentence intonation." ToBI analyses of English intonation bear that out.
"Last," of course, behaves both as an ordinal and as a superlative, not surprising given its origin as a superlative and subsequent grammaticalization and reduction followed by the later development of the doublet "latest." Words carry their history with them and not infrequently upset our analyses because of it. Think of /cleave/clove/cloven/cleft/cleaved and all the specializations there arising from an OE strong verb and an OE weak verb. The two verbs are identical now, but they've left the lexicon littered with their castoffs.
Herb
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
Sent: Friday, December 24, 2010 11:15 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Independent clause or noun phrase
Herb,
I don't think we would normally say "She was one of the last two people to see him alive." Normal would be "the last two people," which is the usual order for ordinal and cardinal numerals. It is strange to say "the last second man" because there can only be one second man.
("This would differ if you meant something like "second baseman" or "second violinist"; last would be Ok there because they act like a compound noun (a set phrase.)
I think there are occasions when "last" would mean something like "latest." The "last report" and "latest report" both leave open the chance of a new report, though there are contexts in which "last"
would be a final element. "The last words she spoke," for example, would mean something very different from "the latest words she spoke".
"Latest" would tend to translate to "most recent" and last would usually be qualified with a point in time: "before she died" or "before she left for Paris."
In the sentence in question, I think "last" is acting like an ordinal numeral. "This is the latest grill brush she will ever need" doesn't mean the same thing.
>
Craig,
>
> You're right that "last" is not a negative polarity item. In this
> example, "ever" is the negative polarity item. Many negative polarity
> items occur in irrealis contexts as well, as Bruce pointed out, and
> it's the "will" that provides the irrealis context in the sentence
> we're talking about. I got the function of "last" wrong.
>
> "Last," however, behaves like the superlative it is, arising
> historically from OE "latost." "Last" and "latest" are a doublet in
> modern English and "latest" developed in the 15th c. We can say, for
> example, "She was one of the two last people to see him alive" or, as
> in the film title, "The Last Man on Earth." These are both places
> where an number word cannot occur. We can get "the second last man on
> earth" but not "the last second man on earth." This suggests that
> "last" is an adjective. Semantically it overlaps with ordinals and
> also can as an ordinal, just as nouns can function as other lexical categories.
>
> Herb
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
> Sent: Thursday, December 23, 2010 7:08 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Independent clause or noun phrase
>
> I would classify "last" as an ordinal numeral: first, second,
> third...last. Different grammars differ in where they draw the lines
> for the determiners, but ordinal numbers are often in that group
> (sometimes called postdeterminers since they come after the core
> determiners like "a," "the," "this," "his" and so on). It has an
> identifying function. The one we are talking about (the one in
> reference) is the last one.
> I don't think it has negative polarity, just the sense that in the
> continuing list of "grill brushes" this is the final one. You can
> negate it: this is not the last grill brush you will ever need."
> Maybe "ever" doesn't extend as much as never because "forever" is
> an option (whereas "fornever" is not). "You will need the grill brush
> forever."
>
> Craig>
>
>
> The last grill brush you will ever need.
>>
>> Is this a sentence at all? To assume an understood "This is" or "It
>> is" won't account for it as they have very different meaning possible
>> references. One almost demands that the brush be in the vicinity for
>> reference. The other might well reference a brush that has yet to be
>> created.
>>
>> I'd take "ever" as a simple adverb with the caveat that it must
>> precede the verb it modifies. Perhaps it also needs something such
>> as "will" in front of it.
>>
>> The understood "that" not stated in the clause is a relative pronoun
>> that serves as the direct object of "will need."
>>
>> Is "last" anything more than a simple adjective? Does it function
>> any differently than, say, "ultimate"?
>>
>> tj
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thursday 12/23/2010 at 7:45 am, Scott Lavitt wrote:
>>> Happy holidays all.
>>>
>>> I've been a member of this listserve for years and occasionally seek
>>> your collective opinion. Question: how does one parse the following?:
>>>
>>> The last grill brush you will ever need.
>>>
>>> I could see this as an independent clause, with "you" as the subj.
>>> and "The last grill brush" as the DO, but that doesn't seem right.
>>> Seems there is an implied "It is," making the above a noun phrase,
>>> and therefore not an independent clause. Thoughts?
>>>
>>> Thank you,
>>>
>>> Scott Lavitt
>>>
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