Exclamatives convey that something is surprising or noteworthy (Zanuttini and Portner 2003:47). Exclamatives generally receive a degree interpretation: they involve the placement of an entity’s property on the extreme degree on a scale, according to some contextually determined value (Rett 2008).

Exclamativity can be expressed in different forms, e.g., in English using a declarative sentence with a high intonation like You have a nice bike!, a clause (truncated or not) with a wh-element like What a nice bike (you have)!, a simple noun such as The train!, or a simple particle Wow!.

The …