The Syntax Of Comparative Constructions

Comparative constructions,commonly used in languages,are a kind of special syntactic structure with their own peculiar semantic and syntactic features.The studies about the syntactic features and derivation of comparative constructions and the similarities and dissimilarities between comparatives and related constructions such as coordinate structures and relative clauses have attracted more and more generative linguists' attention.The fact that comparative constructions are the core of recent linguistic research is due to the reason that they share marvelous interrelatedness with some significant assumptions such as semantics-syntax interface and X-bar theory.This thesis attempts to discuss the syntactic structure and derivation of comparative constructions within the more recent generative theories, including Chomsky(1995)'s Minimalist framework and Kayne(1994)'s antisymmetric approach.The debate on the syntactic structure of comparatives lies in the structural relation between the degree head and the comparative clause.The traditional analysis(Bresnan 1975)argues that the comparative clause is an argument of the degree head.But the extended DegP analysis(Kennedy 1997)argues that the comparative clause is an adjunct.In this thesis,the author first provides the syntactic and semantic evidence to support the claim that the comparative clause is an argument of the degree head,and then argues that the traditional analysis is untenable because of its empirical and conceptual problems. The author proposes a new structure of comparatives and assumes that a comparative construction can be a DegP or its extended projection DP structurally,as schematically illustrated as below: a.[_DegPAP[_Deg,Deg⁰_{[+comparative]}[than-clause]]] b.[_DPD⁰[_DegPAP[_Deg,Deg⁰_{[+comparative]}[than-clause]]]]In this analysis,the comparative clause serves as a complement to Deg⁰.AP is situated in SpecDegP and the comparative morphology is checked on the AP by a suitable[+comparative]feature in Deg⁰ under Spec-head agreement.The proposal sufficiently accounts for the differences between predicate and nominal comparatives and remedies the shortcoming of the traditional NP-adjunction analysis of prenominal modifiers.The second main objective of this thesis is to investigate the derivational mechanism of NP-comparatives.Based on an investigation of structurally complex NP-comparatives,we present a syntactic and semantic account for comparatives which does not require reference to construction specific process.The raising hypothesis argues that the formation of comparatives consists in feature-driven movement of the comparative predicate from the gap inside the comparative clause to its surface position.The analysis rests on one assumption that the missing constituent is associated with its antecedent by overt movement,not by ellipsis,and that the resulting chain is embedded in a right-branching phrase marker.The conception contributes to an understanding of a number of puzzles for NP-comparatives related to binding and locality.