The sentence

You can’t have too many cats!

is ambiguous between two almost opposite meanings (depending on the interpretation of the modal)

Either

‘There is no such thing as too many; it’s not possible to have too many cats’ (epistemic)

or

‘There is such a thing as too many; you are not allowed to have that many cats or more’ (deontic)

But clearly anyone uttering the sentence with the second interpretation is uttering a falsehood 😉

#syntax #semantics