COMPARATIVES AND DEFINITE NOUN PHRASES
HOW TO ACCOUNT FOR THEIR SIMILARITIES (AND DIFFERENCES)
2002 年 19 巻 2 号 p. 161-185
詳細
2002 年 19 巻 2 号 p. 161-185
Bowers (1987) observes that comparatives like angrier, more angry, and as angry are similar to definite noun phrases in that they form a syntactic island with respect to extraction and scope interpretation, which leads him to claim that both comparatives and definite noun phrases are members of the same syntactic category, called “Determiner Phrase” (DP). This paper argues against the DP analysis of comparatives and shows that what the DP analysis attempts to account for can be better accounted for in terms of a semantic notion like presupposition. It is emphasized that, generally, just because two or more kinds of syntactic units appear to behave similarly with respect to certain linguistic phenomena, that does not prove that they belong to the same syntactic category; there still remains the possibility of explaining the linguistic phenomena in question in terms of a semantic or pragmatic factor or factors which may range over different syntactic categories.
