The puzzle of quasi prima ‘almost before’ and quasi dopo ‘almost after’

This paper focuses on a puzzling asymmetry which arises when the Italian approximative adverb quasi „almost‟ modifies the temporal connectives prima „before‟ and dopo „after‟. By looking at naturally occurring data, we observe that A quasi prima che B „A almost before B‟ can be used to convey that an A-eventuality occurs early, only a little bit after a B-eventuality occurs. A sentence of the form A quasi dopo che B „A almost after B‟, however, cannot be used to convey that an A-eventuality occurs late, only a little bit before a B-eventuality. We propose a solution for this puzzle that relies on an analysis of quasi as a scale-sensitive adverb and on an asymmetric semantic account of prima and dopo: prima has the meaning of the temporal comparative „earlier‟, while dopo denotes a binary relation of temporal succession between events. We show that our account of quasi prima reveals a more general pattern of interpretation found when quasi modifies a comparative.