Ellipsis in Comparatives

Lechner, Winfried

doi:10.1515/9783110197402

Cited by 105 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…In certain cases, because of the applicability of reduction operations, the than-phrase in a phrasal comparative could be a reduced clause and a 3-place degree head that combines with an individual might not be necessary. This seems to be the case with English and German (see Lechner (2001), Lechner (2004)). In cases where reduction operations are unavailable, a 3-place -er is forced, as argued for Hindi-Urdu in Bhatt and Takahashi (2007).…”

Section: Multiple Routes To a Single Meaningmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…What c-commands the remnant? Building upon Lechner (2004)'s observations, we present the following generalization:…”

Section: Binding and The Direct Analysis In Englishmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…Once such a reduction operation is assumed, the need for a distinct 3-place -er that combines with individuals disappears and we can limit ourselves to one -er which takes two degree descriptions as arguments. Particular instantiations of the Reduction Analysis differ on exactly what reduction operation is relevant (Gapping, Conjunction Reduction: Lechner 2001Lechner , 2004TP-ellipsis, Stripping: Merchant 2007) and what the size of the reduced object is (Pancheva 2006(Pancheva , 2007.…”

Section: -Place -Er and Phrasal Comparativesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…5 And in fact, as we will see, in languages where the Direct Analysis is available, we do not find evidence for the binding generalization. 5 That the Direct Analysis is not an option for English and that phrasal comparatives in English must receive a Reduction Analysis is a point that we take to have been made at length in Lechner (2001)/Lechner (2004 and Pancheva (2007). For this reason, we do not address here in any detail the various challenges to a uniformly clausal treatment of English phrasal comparatives.…”

Section: Binding and The Direct Analysis In Englishmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Reduced and unreduced phrasal comparatives

Bhatt

Takahashi

2011

Nat Lang Linguist Theory

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Degree heads combine with individual (John is taller than [Mary]) as well as clausal arguments (John is taller than [Mary is]). Does the degree head have the same meaning in these two argument structures? Two kinds of answers have been proposed in the literature: i. there is a single meaning where the degree head combines with a degree predicate (2-placeer), with a reduction operation that derives the DP argument from a degree predicate denoting clausal argument, and ii. there are distinct meanings for each argument structure, one combining with an individual denoting DP (3-place -er) and the other with a degree predicate denoting clause (2-place -er). We show that languages vary in which of these answers they choose: English goes for option I and Hindi-Urdu and Japanese for versions of option II. Despite this surface variation, we argue that the crosslinguistic distribution of 2-place and 3-place -er is not in itself subject to crosslinguistic parametrization; they are just syntactic projections of the basic meaning of comparison. The differences between these languages are therefore derived from the morphosyntactic properties of 'than', considerations of directionality, and a preference for minimal structure. Multiple Routes to A Single MeaningNatural languages often provide instances where two distinct structures map to the same meaning. The much-studied operation of passivization could be taken to provide an instance of two structures, the active and the passive, mapping to the same meaning. In this paper we are interested in examining a similar pair from the domain of comparative constructions. Many languages allow comparative meanings to be expressed by means of a clausal comparative (1a) and a phrasal comparative (1b). These seem to have the same meaning but differ in the category of the constituent that than combines with. In the case of a clausal comparative, than combines with a clause that has undergone some reduction operation and in the case of a phrasal comparative, than combines with a DP. If we believe that the surface structures in (1) are directly the input to interpretation, we are led to the conclusion that the comparative degree head -er has a distinct semantic entry in the clausal comparative and the phrasal comparative. More specifically, if we assume following von Stechow (1984) that the clausal complement of than denotes a degree description, then the degree head in a clausal comparative combines with a degree description while the degree head in a phrasal comparative combines with an individual.(1) Comparison: a. Clausal Comparative: John is taller than [Bill is].-a degree head that combines with a clause 2-place -er: 2 arguments -the extent of John's tallness, the extent of Bill's tallness 1

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Section: Multiple Routes To a Single Meaningmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…What c-commands the remnant? Building upon Lechner (2004)'s observations, we present the following generalization:…”

Section: Binding and The Direct Analysis In Englishmentioning

confidence: 96%

Section: -Place -Er and Phrasal Comparativesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Binding and The Direct Analysis In Englishmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Reduced and unreduced phrasal comparatives

Bhatt

Takahashi

2011

Nat Lang Linguist Theory

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“…This degree head takes two arguments: the lexical AP (if there is one) and the grade argument (G), which is the comparative subclause (than-XP/als-XP) if the Deg is filled by -er (see also Lechner 2004). The QP (quantifier phrase) layer is necessary for hosting modifiers (e.g., far).…”

Section: The Proposed Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Structural case and ambiguity in reduced comparative subclauses in English and German

Bácskai-Atkári¹

2014

Acta Linguistica Hungarica

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The paper argues that structural case assignment properties of English and German reduced comparative subclauses arise from syntactic requirements as well as processes holding at the syntaxphonology interface. I show that constructions involving both an adjectival and a verbal predicate require the subject remnant of the adjectival predicate to be marked for the accusative case both in English and German, which cannot be explained by the notion of default accusative case, especially because German has no default accusative case. I argue that a phonologically defective subclause is reanalysed as part of the matrix clausal object, and hence receives accusative morphological case.

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Empty Categories and Ellipsis

Brucart

MacDonald

2012

The Handbook of Hispanic Linguistics

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Ellipsis in Comparatives

Cited by 105 publications

References 47 publications

Reduced and unreduced phrasal comparatives

Reduced and unreduced phrasal comparatives

Structural case and ambiguity in reduced comparative subclauses in English and German

Empty Categories and Ellipsis

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