Incremental more

There is an interpretation of (1) in which the second conjunct, it rained a little more in the afternoon, is an assertion that it rained in the afternoon, possibly less than three hours. In this reading, the second conjunct is interpreted neither as an assertion that the duration of the rain in the afternoon was greater than some standard (the duration of the rain in the morning), nor as an assertion that it was a little longer than this standard. Rather, this interpretation of (1) conveys that it rained for some short period of time in the afternoon, and that this event of raining is in some sense added to the event of raining that took place in the morning, the two events forming a larger eventuality of raining. We call this the incremental use of more. In this paper, we argue that incremental more (morei nc ) is a pluractional additive operator. As shown in sections 2 and 3, morei nc combines with a relation D between degrees and eventualities, triggers a presupposition that a similar relation is satisfied by a pair of degree and eventuality (dp ,ep ), asserts that D itself is satisfied by another pair of degrees and eventuality (d ,e), and asserts also that a similar relation is satisfied by the sum of the two pairs, (dp + d ,ep ⊕ e). It is this last component of the meaning of morei nc that makes it a pluractional operator. Evidence for such a pluractional semantics comes from the analysis of some restrictions on the use of morei nc with stative predicates on the one hand, and with achievements and accomplishments on the other hand. Morei nc is attested in some stative predications, c.f. (2), but not in others, c.f. (3):