Phrasal 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 of comparatives further shows that reducing the island effects to semantic or other illformedness is not possible: the island effects are irreducibly syntactic. Such facts provide support for syntactic architectures that countenance this kind of abstractness. One of the recurrent leitmotifs of theorizing in many domains, including syntax, is that simple surface appearances can be misleading, and that underneath apparently simple elements or phenomena we find complex and intricate structures. This paper explores one such domain, that of phrasal comparatives, and shows that in at least one language, namely Greek, these constructions, which appear on the surface quite simple, actually contain ∗My greatest thanks go to Anastasia Giannakidou, without whose intuitions and help this paper could not have been written. Thanks also to Chris Kennedy, Howard Lasnik, and Jan-Wouter Zwart for comments and questions, as well as to audiences at Stanford and Michigan and in Seoul and Albuquerque, where parts of the material were presented.