Than clauses as embedded questions

Abstract

Quantifiers in comparative than clauses often appear to take scope at the matrix level, a phenomenon that has spawned a large recent literature. Here I reopen an old line of investigation that seeks illumination in the strikingly similar behavior of quantifiers in embedded questions. A novel observation in this connection is that English clausal comparatives support quantificational variability effects. I explore the possibility of treating than clauses as embedded questions, sketching two implementations, and weigh this type of analysis against recent approaches that invoke degree pluralities. I also discuss multiple-wh configurations in clausal comparatives.