This paper proposes a semantic analysis of comparison constructions in Japanese which is crucially different from the standard semantics of comparatives as developed for English and related languages. The interpretation of the Japanese comparison construction is determined to a larger extent by pragmatic strategies, as opposed to compositional semantics. The syntactically provided item of comparison (the constituent accompanying yori) does not, in contrast to an English than-clause, have a degree semantics; it ultimately contributes an individual. From this item the real comparison has to be inferred. We argue that Japanese does not have English-style degree operators and probably lacks abstraction over degree variables in the syntax altogether. The proposed analysis accounts for a number of empirical differences between Japanese and English. A more general outcome is that the semantics of comparison is subject to crosslinguistic variation. A parameter of language variation is suggested as the source of the differences we observe.

The quantificational suffix mo in Japanese has long been assumed to induce universal interpretation. However, there is a rare counterexample. The intuitive interpretation of na'n-satu-mo 'what-CL volume -MO' is 'a large number of volumes,' which is existential. This study argues that in cases like this, the quantificational suffix mo is indeed an existential suffix, and that therefore the grammar has two types of quantificational suffix mo, namely universal mo and existential mo.* Keywords: numerals, indeterminate phrases, existential quantification, scalar presupposition 15 Note that what-CL-KA as in (72) does not have the interpretation of 'one,' either. In other words, the sentence can not be interpreted as 'John read one book.' It is not clear at this point how this ban on 'one' arises. In any case, the analysis of Section 5.2 does not apply, because the sentence does not have any scalar particle.

Overt Degree Arguments as Internal Heads of Relative Clauses of Degree