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S-Lab - Mal Shah / Comparatives, Subcomparatives, and...

Two classmates, a young woman and a young man, standing side-by-side, arms akimbo, smiling in front of a blackboard, wearing oddly similar outfits: beige pants a black pullover.

S-Lab - Mal Shah / Comparatives, Subcomparatives, and...

Linguistics Monday, September 21, 2026 3:30 pm - 4:45 pm Marie Mount Hall, 1108B

September 21, Mal Shah leads S-Lab with discussion of anaphoric ellipsis in Comparatives and Subcomparatives.

Bresnan (1973, 1975) argued that comparatives involve the deletion of matching terms, as in (1a). She argued that this could be done even in violation of the Left Branch Constraint, as in (1b).


(1a) I listen to louder records than I play <loud records>
(1b) I listened to as much of the old catalogue than I played <much> of the new catalogue.


Pinkham (1982) observed a problem. Bresnan's analysis overgenerates (2):
 

(2) You bought a more expensive EP than I sold a <expensive> single.

Favoring Chomsky's (1977) analysis in terms of movement of a degree operator, Kennedy and Merchant analyze (1a/b) as cases of Salvation By Deletion, and (2) as a failure to do so. I try to extend this to Subcomparatives, finding only mixed success.
I will explore the idea that invoking another constraint, namely MaxElide (Merchant 2001, Takahashi & Fox 2005), might help get the whole paradigm, and is independently justified. If there is time, I will see if this idea can also explain apparent long-distance category-matching effects in Subcomparatives.

Add to Calendar 09/21/26 15:30:00 09/21/26 16:45:00 America/New_York S-Lab - Mal Shah / Comparatives, Subcomparatives, and...

September 21, Mal Shah leads S-Lab with discussion of anaphoric ellipsis in Comparatives and Subcomparatives.

Bresnan (1973, 1975) argued that comparatives involve the deletion of matching terms, as in (1a). She argued that this could be done even in violation of the Left Branch Constraint, as in (1b).


(1a) I listen to louder records than I play <loud records>
(1b) I listened to as much of the old catalogue than I played <much> of the new catalogue.


Pinkham (1982) observed a problem. Bresnan's analysis overgenerates (2):
 

(2) You bought a more expensive EP than I sold a <expensive> single.

Favoring Chomsky's (1977) analysis in terms of movement of a degree operator, Kennedy and Merchant analyze (1a/b) as cases of Salvation By Deletion, and (2) as a failure to do so. I try to extend this to Subcomparatives, finding only mixed success.
I will explore the idea that invoking another constraint, namely MaxElide (Merchant 2001, Takahashi & Fox 2005), might help get the whole paradigm, and is independently justified. If there is time, I will see if this idea can also explain apparent long-distance category-matching effects in Subcomparatives.

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