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