Sohn, Sook-Ja. 1999. An Analysis of English Comparative Constructions. Linguistics 7-3, 39-60. The purpose of this article is to show the syntactic or semantic properties of comparative constructions. The comparative constructions are divided into two...
Sohn, Sook-Ja. 1999. An Analysis of English Comparative Constructions. Linguistics 7-3, 39-60. The purpose of this article is to show the syntactic or semantic properties of comparative constructions. The comparative constructions are divided into two groups with respect to equivalence and non-equivalence comparisons. The comparative items, 'as' and '-er', which are used for the equivalence and the non-equivalence comparison, respectively, have their underlying structures like [? as much] and [? -er much (or) little]. The comparative items 'as' and 'more'(or 'less') are derived from their underlying structures by 'Much' deletion and Cliticization, respectively. And the comparative clauses, led by complementizers 'as' and 'than' and dominated by QP', are extraposed to the right of the grammatical categories which govern the deletion of comparative constituents under the identity or recoverability condition. But there are some other comparative constructions, in which 'as' and 'than' are used as prepositions. In these cases, the phrasal extraposition which does not necessarily observe the above condition of deletion, is optionally applied. (Seokang College)