Experimental Evidence for the Syntax of Phrasal Comparatives in Polish
نویسندگان
چکیده
Pancheva (2009) argues that phrasal comparatives in Polish exhibit a subject-island effect. She proposes an account of the island effect as a combination of several factors: than has a small clause complement in phrasal comparatives; wh-movement turns the than-clause into a degree predicate; wh-movement of the vP subject is prohibited by an anti-locality constraint; sub-extraction of the vP subject is then the only option, but it causes an island violation. Informally elicited judgments support this proposal but there is a fair amount of variability among and even within speakers. Given this variability in speakers’ responses, we need to elicit judgments in controlled conditions allowing subsequent quantitative analysis. We conducted two acceptability-rating studies on Polish comparatives following standard experimental procedures and testing a large number of speakers. The results support the small clause analysis of phrasal comparatives. This working paper is available in University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: http://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/
منابع مشابه
Winfried Lechner Reduced and Phrasal Comparatives
In this paper, I defend two hypotheses as to the derivation of phonologically reduced comparative constructions. On the one hand, I present evidence which supports an ellipsis analysis of phrasal comparatives over base-generation approaches. On the other hand, it is argued that the restrictions on deletion in comparatives are exhaustively determined by the principles governing Gapping, Right No...
متن کاملPhrasal and clausal comparatives in Greek and the abstractness of syntax
Greek phrasal and reduced clausal comparatives differ in that the former, but not the latter, show island sensitivities. In neither case, however, is the material that constitutes the island pronounced. This paper argues that such facts can only be captured by positing abstract unpronounced syntactic structures over which the island constraints are stated; the comparison between the two kinds o...
متن کاملComparative Ellipsis and Variable Binding
It is hard to find a class of natural language phenomena which exhibits more complex interactions between syntax and semantics than comparative constructions. Comparatives come with phrasal or clausal complements. In this paper, we focus on phrasal comparatives, which on first inspection look simpler than the clausal ones, but in fact add a degree of complexity. We will consider predicative com...
متن کاملInvisible Degree Nominals in Japanese Clausal
English comparative sentences fall into two kinds: phrasal and clausal comparatives. Phrasal comparatives involve a single DP in the accusative case as the complement of than, while clausal comparatives involve a structure as big as a full clause. (1) a. John is smarter than her. Phrasal comparative b. John is smarter than she is (smart). Clausal comparative In the literature, two competing vie...
متن کاملLechner Reduced And
In this paper, I defend two hypotheses as to the derivation of phonologically reduced comparative constructions. On the one hand, I present evidence which supports an ellipsis analysis of phrasal comparatives over base-generation approaches. On the other hand, it is argued that the restrictions on deletion in comparatives are exhaustively determined by the principles governing Gapping, Right No...
متن کامل