Abstract
We examine the distribution of differentials in nominal comparatives in a range of languages and find a surprising diversity of patterns. While English allows for both numerals and numerically quantified noun phrases as differentials (Mary read two more books/books more than John), many languages cannot use numerals as differentials. We show that the classical semantics of comparatives extends naturally to the nominal comparatives with numeral differentials (two more books) but not to the case where the differential is a numerically quantified noun phrase (two books more). We extend the semantics to handle these cases. We further show that this extension is not sufficient to handle differentials in nominal comparatives in French where a more radical extension is motivated. This close examination of differentials teaches us that the class of measure phrases is much larger than traditionally conceived, potentially coextensive with the class of count nouns.
This paper owes an obvious debt to Roger’s work on measure phrases and has in fact benefited from conversations with Roger. We hope that the appendix will assuage his doubts about subcomparatives. The paper has also benefited from discussions with Irene Heim and audiences at SuSurrus at UMass-Amherst and in an earlier incarnation at the ConSOLE at Leipzig, IJN, NYU and UConn. Many friends have shared their judgements for this project; not all the judgements appear here but they have shaped our thinking. Thank you!
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Notes
- 1.
The nominal comparatives that we have examined so far have involved count nouns. The situation with nominal amount comparatives is more complex and we will return to it later in the context of French.
- 2.
Putative measure of beauty defined as the amount of beauty required to justify the launching of one ship.
- 3.
There is some variation in judgements here. Einar Freyr Sigurðsson finds the first example ok but Sigríður Sigurjónsdóttir finds it ungrammatical.
- 4.
The structure [Num NP] more NP is not ungrammatical in general. Our editor Jessica Rett pointed out the following cases to us.
We believe that here the count noun behaves like a mass noun, a case that we return to later. Here’s a way to properly characterize the restriction on [Num NP\(_1\)] more NP\(_2\): [Num NP\(_1\)] more NP\(_2\) is acceptable only when NP\(_1\) introduces a unit that is not already provided by NP\(_2\). Boxes give us a new way of carving up books, while in the normal state of affairs, horses does not give us a new unit for animals; they both share the same unit.
- 5.
We are inspired here by Kennedy (2001) treatment of cross-polar anomalies.
- 6.
We return to the agreements facts in the context of amount comparatives as part of our discussion of the corresponding French facts in Sect. 3.2.
- 7.
The nature in the variability of judgements is not our concern here. (25a) was judged to be ungrammatical by Terje Lohndal but was accepted albeit reluctantly by other speakers of Norwegian. It is our impression that like the fewer/less distinction in English, many speakers display insecurity about the “right” form.
- 8.
Some phrases that seem to be numerals can fit in what resembles the Numeral-More-NP order:
The nouns milliers, millions, milliards “thousand”, “million”, “billion”, are actually special: they combine with a count noun, but require the preposition de to do so. We have a minimal pair formed by mille and milliers: the former cannot precede plus:
Mille cannot combine with a de-phrase:
There is thus a reason why (i) is possible while (ii) isn’t: unlike mille (a part of a numeral), milliers is a measurement unit (of cardinality), which takes an object, e.g., de livres. Schwarzschild (2005) offers further cases of crosslinguistic variability of this kind. We submit that in (i), de livres is an extraposed object; extraposition is optional, see (iv).
In sum, (i) is an instance of the Numeral-NP-More order, and is not an exception to the claim that French lacks the Numeral-More-NP order in nominal comparatives with a differential.
- 9.
Spanish is similar to French in that, in nominal comparatives, only the Numeral-NP-More order is available with count nouns. Importantly, Spanish can show us something that French cannot, because it has bare NPs, unlike French (where an indefinite NP is formed with an NP preceded by de, most often combined with a definite article).
The preposition de mandatorily precedes a mass noun in a nominal comparative construction:
We can conclude from this that de vino in (iia) and (iib) must be the object of the noun litros “liters”. This is evidence that in Spanish, and probably also in French, the order observed in (iia) is the result of the extraposition of the object of the measurement unit noun. Therefore even with mass nouns, the English construal with a degree head modified by a differential is not available in Spanish/French.
- 10.
- 11.
- 12.
The acceptability of (51c) is surprising given our claim that only degrees of the same kind can be summed. We would need to assume that we can map between pear degrees and apple degrees. Moreover the degrees ranged over by amount should be restricted to apple degrees.
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11.4 Appendix: Subcomparatives and Differentials
11.4 Appendix: Subcomparatives and Differentials
In most cases, the Numeral-More-NP and the Numeral-NP-More options are largely interchangeable. We have, however, identified one environment where the two options come apart strikingly. This environment is the more NP\(_1\) than NP\(_2\) subcomparative.
The contrast weakens if the than-phrase appears at the end of the clause.
This suggests to us that the problem is not associated with subcomparatives in general but with the particular structure of the more NP\(_1\) than NP\(_2\) subcomparative. In many environments, more NP\(_1\) than NP\(_2\) has available to it both a phrasal parse and a clausal parse. This restriction only applies to the phrasal parse; if a clausal parse is available, there is no ill-formedness.
When NP\(_1\) more than NP\(_2\) appears in subject position, only the phrasal parse is availableFootnote 11 and we get ungrammaticality. Why might this be? We are not in a position to give a full account but here are some initial steps towards an explanation. Note that (51c)Footnote 12 is acceptable while (49c) is not. This means the contrast might have a syntactic source. The following example might be relevant.
The differential one seems to require both the NPs in the subject comparative to be singular, which leads to ungrammaticality. The clausal parse is not subject to this requirement.
Subcomparatives with differentials lead to a situation of ineffability in French. French has phrasal subcomparatives that resemble the ones in English:
But it does not allow for numerals as differentials, blocking the (49b) option. Now we have reason to believe that in French the Numeral-NP-More option differs from its English counterpart (see our degreeless analysis for that option). At this point, it is not clear to us what prediction our theory for French makes for (54), but, interestingly, it turns out to be bad (to be compared with (55), where the subcomparative structure appears in object position):
As in English, recourse to extraposition (and thus, to the clausal option), has an ameliorating effect:
Obviously this parallel behavior in French and English is surprising, given the differential analysis we offered for the Numeral-NP-More order in the two languages.
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Bhatt, R., Homer, V. (2019). Differentials Crosslinguistically. In: Altshuler, D., Rett, J. (eds) The Semantics of Plurals, Focus, Degrees, and Times. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04438-1_11
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