Definite description of episodic free relatives in Jordanian Arabic: A choice function analysis

Cross-linguistically, phrasal comparatives have been shown to vary with respect to the categorical status and denotational meaning of their standard of comparison (i.e., the NP constituent following the ‘than’ particle): whether the standard of comparison in phrasal comparatives is to be categorized as a superficially individual-denoting nominal expression or it is to be interpreted as an underlyingly degree-denoting reduced clause that undergoes deletion in the syntax. This paper argues that Jordanian Arabic (JA) is a language which makes use of phrasal comparatives with no clausal source in the standard of comparison. The paper further shows that the comparative head (i.e., the –er morpheme) in JA phrasal comparatives requires a special instance of Schönfinkelization of the comparative operator which relates individual-denoting objects with no transformations in the syntax-semantics interface.

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Definite description of episodic free relatives in Jordanian Arabic: A choice function analysis

Cited by 2 publications

References 20 publications

A puzzle related to superlative modification in definite relative clauses in Jordanian Arabic

A puzzle related to superlative modification in definite relative clauses in Jordanian Arabic

A different kind of phrasal comparatives with a non-transformational Schönfinkelization in semantic composition: the case of Jordanian Arabic

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