The comparative and degree pluralities

Abstract

Quantifiers in phrasal and clausal comparatives often seem to take distributive scope in the matrix clause: for instance, the sentence John is taller than every girl is is true iff for every girl it holds that John is taller than that girl. Broadly speaking, two approaches exist that derive this reading without postulating the (problematic) wide scope of the quantifier: the negation analysis and the interval analysis of thanclauses. We propose a modification of the interval analysis in which than-clauses are not treated as degree intervals but as degree pluralities. This small change has significant consequences: it yields a straightforward account of differentials in comparatives and it correctly predicts the existence of hitherto unnoticed readings, viz. cumulative readings of clausal comparatives. Finally, this paper also makes the case that using degree pluralities is conceptually appealing: it allows us to restrict the analysis of comparatives by mechanisms that are postulated independently in the semantics of pluralities.

Ambiguous than-clauses and the mention-some reading

“…Therefore, similarly, for comparatives like Lucinda is taller than every boy is, the than-clause should also denote a range of degrees, not a sum of degrees (see (46), cf. Beck 2014; Dotlačil & Nouwen 2016). Moreover, as we have proposed, a than-clause should denote an interval, i.e., a convex set, which means that details between its endpoints should be overlooked and not affect further derivation.…”

“…Crnič (2017) adopts the degree-plurality-based framework developed by Beck (2010Beck ( , 2013Beck ( , 2014 and Dotlačil & Nouwen (2016). Within this framework, the domain of degrees is similar to the domain of entities in that there are not only atomic degrees like 50 mph, 6 5 , but also degree pluralities like 50 mph ⊕ 51 mph, etc.…”

“…7 As shown in (30), operations on two intervals result in the largest possible range. 4 The differences between this recipe and the interval-based approach of Schwarzchild & Wilkinson (2002) as well as the degree-plurality-based approach developed by Beck (2014) and Dotlačil & Nouwen (2016) are discussed in Zhang & Ling 2015, 2017b. 5 This distance-based ontology for the semantics of comparatives is different from the classical threshold-exceeding view (see Schwarzschild 2008;etc), and the differences between these two views are discussed in Zhang & Ling 2015, 2017b.…”

“…Alternatively, based on a degree-plurality-based approach to the semantics of comparatives (Beck 2010(Beck , 2013(Beck , 2014Dotlačil & Nouwen 2016), Crnič (2017) attributes the ambiguity of sentence (1) to the optional application of a silent operator.…”

The scope of nominal quantifiers in comparative clauses

“…max A huge body of literature addresses the compositional semantics of clausal comparatives and other clausal degree constructions containing quantifiers (von Stechow 1984, Larson 1988, Kennedy 1997, Beck & Rullmann 1999, Stateva 2000, Heim 2000, Schwarzschild & Wilkinson 2002, Heim 2006, Gajewski 2008, Schwarzschild 2008, van Rooij 2008, Beck 2012a, Krasikova 2008, Beck 2010, Matushansky 2011, Beck 2012b, 2014, Aloni & Roelofsen 2014, Alrenga & Kennedy 2014, Fleisher 2015, Dotlačil & Nouwen 2016. A common theme in a fair part of these articles is that degree semantics interacts with scope, and it is this relative scope that determines whether there is a maximum-related or minimum-related reading.…”