Beck et al (2004)

Beck et al. (2004) points out a few problems with treating compared-to phrases as the standard degree argument of the adjective. While I don't think their arguments are very compelling, the analysis that they propose has certain intuitive benefits, and it is worth arguing explicitly against it. One benefit of the analysis is that it actually ends up maintaining the traditional degree-argument analysis. It does so not by overcoming the problems that they point out, but rather by banishing it from the gradable adjective phrase altogether. Under their analysis, compared-to phrases are sentence level adjuncts that serve the role of pragmatic "context setters".

Speakers infer the value of the standard degree from a compared-to phrase. One of their main argument concerns the compositional semantics of

compared-to phrases. In the traditional degree argument analysis, a gradable

adjective is a function from degrees to functions from individuals to truth values (i.e., they are of type <d,<e,t>>). They adopt the common view that when the standard degree is not expressed explicitly, its value is supplied by the context.

(69) AP wo DegP A ! ds (70) a. Bill is tall.

b. the degree to which Bill is tall

≥ d

s

d

s = the size standard made salient by the utterance context

Beck et al. rightly point out that if compared-to phrases are supposed to sit in the degree argument slot and compositionally supply the value of the standard degree

d

s,

then we need someway to compositionally derive a degree term from a compared-to phrase. But there is nothing inside of compare- to phrases that degrees can be abstracted over since they don't contain a gradable predicate. But in a phrase of the form compared to DP, there is no gradable adjective phrase, and hence, no degree variable to abstract over.18

(71) a. Compared to John, Bill is tall.

b. #the degree to which Bill is tall

≥

John

18 _{Beck et al. (2004) seem to assume that the compared to part of compared-to}

phrases is completely vacuous semantically. As a result, there is nothing in a

compared-to phrase except the DP. See Fults (2005) for a semantic analysis that does

derive a degree term out of a compared-to phrase using the verb compare to introduce a gradable property and, hence, a degree.

Their point is well taken – (71)b is nonsense because degrees cannot be compared to individuals. But instead of offering a way to derive a degree out of compared-to phrases, Beck et al. propose that comparison phrases can serve as an input to the pragmatics and be used to infer the value of the standard degree ds.

(72) a. Compared to John, Bill is tall. b. the degree to which Bill is tall

≥

ds

c. ds = the size standard made salient by the utterance context

d. ds := John's height

The important step is between (72)c and (72)d. The compared-to phrase provides enough information to understand that the utterance is "about John" in someway. This, combined with the fact that the gradable predicate involved is tall, allows speakers to infer that the size standard must be John's height.

Notice that the analysis is capable of maintaining the degree argument analysis. The gradable adjective still takes an internal degree argument, it is just not actually supplied by the compared-to phrase. Hence, there is no need to incorporate

compared-to phrases into the traditional degree-argument analysis as a standard

denoting expression. The analysis could also be straight-forwardly applied to the measure function theories. These theories have to account for implicit standard degrees as well, and however it is done, the compared-to phrase can be used to pragmatically infer its value. But I think there are good reasons to believe that

following sections. If these reasons are convincing, then we need to provide an analysis that can incorporate compared-to phrases into the semantics in compositional fashion that does not involve a inference mechanism. For now, note that the

argument put forth in Beck et al. has far reaching consequences. They do not discuss the fact that for-PP's and phrasal comparatives pose the same problem for a

compositional degree-based system.19

(73) a. Adam is big [for an ant].

b. #the degree to which Adam is big ≥ ants]

(74) a. Fred is fatter [than Barney].

b. #the degree to which Fred is fat > Barney

There is not a gradable property of the ants or of Barney to abstract degrees over. According to the logic of Beck et al., this means that for-PP's and phrasal

comparatives should be handled in the pragmatics as well. One could imagine an analysis in which for-PP's pragmatically set the value of the standard degree (this is more difficult to imagine with phrasal comparatives). The syntactic properties of for-

PP's presented in section 2.2 argue against this conclusion. Having determined that for-PP's are introduced inside the gradable adjective phrase, and that they arrive at

19 _{That is, under the assumption that phrasal-than does not contain any elided clausal}

material. (Hankamer, 1973, Kennedy, 1999) If there is clausal material, then it might contain a gradable predicate that introduces a degree variable. This is the standard analysis of clausal comparatives, which plausibly do contain an elided gradable predicate. (Bresnan, 1973) But see Lechner (2001) which offers evidence that phrasal-than does contain clausal material.

sentence initial positions only through movement, we might hope that they simply denote the standard degree, or at least, enter into the compositional semantics at that point using traditional function application or predicate modification rules. In the sections that follow, I will apply the same diagnostics to compared-to phrases that were applied to for-PP's. The same conclusion will be drawn: they are introduced as part of the gradable adjective phrase. We will be able to conclude from this that

compared-to phrases should be incorporated into the semantic form via compositional

rules, not pragmatic inferences. Before I do that, however, let's now turn to ruling out one other possible analysis of compared-to phrases.

In document ABSTRACT DR. PAUL PIETROSKI, DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS. This dissertation explores the syntax and semantics of positive and (Page 49-53)