- He ordered the strongest drink possible.
- He ordered the strongest possible drink.
Observation: the two sentences seem to be semantically equivalent.
Question 1: are the two actually meaningfully equivalent? Are there contexts where one is felicitous and the other isn't? Does one result in an additional implicature/presupposition/piece of meaning that the other doesn't?
Observation: 'possible' does not seem to modify drink. Notice that when 'possible' would unambiguously modify drink, as in the latter two of the three possible relative clauses, the meaning is changed:
- the drink that he ordered was the strongest possible drink.
- ≠ the strongest drink that he ordered was a possible drink.
- ≠ the possible drink that he ordered was the strongest drink.
Question 2: What does 'possible' modify? Is it telling us to consider all possible worlds?
Observation: there seems to be a relationship between '-est' and 'possible'. Removing '-est' renders the sentences ungrammatical.
- * He ordered the stronger drink possible.
- * He ordered the stronger possible drink.
Observation: it is not just '-est'; 'most' can also license post-nominal 'possible' (though prenominal 'possible' is far less acceptable to my ear).
- He ordered the most alcoholic drink possible.
- *? He ordered the most alcoholic possible drink.
- He tried to get the most money possible (from the ATM).
- ? He tried to get the most possible money (from the ATM).
Question 4: How does this affect the formalization between '-est'/'most' and 'possible'? It is not the result of attributive adjective syntax that post-nominal 'possible' is licensed. (Though, I suppose this depends on how you treat 'most' in these examples.)
Observation: Some other words can occur post-nominally or pre-nominally, only in a superlative context; e.g. 'available':
- He ordered the strongest (available) drink (available).
- He ordered the stronger (*available) drink (*available).
- He ordered the strongest (??ever) drink (ever).
- He ordered the stronger (*ever) drink (*ever).
In summary, we're left with a lot of questions, and not a lot of answers. That's what research (and not morning musing) is for.