Unmerging analytical comparatives
Unmerging analytical comparatives

Summary/Abstract: We look at the internal structure of the English analytic comparative marker more, arguing that it spells out nearly all the features of a gradable adjective. When this marker is merged with an adjective in the positive degree, it creates a situation of feature recursion or overlap, where more duplicates certain features that are also present in the adjective that it modifies. We argue that such overlap must be disallowed as a matter of principle. We present an empirical argument in favour of such a restriction, which is based on the generalization that comparative markers which occur to the left of the adjectival root are in-compatible with suppletion. This generalization can be shown to follow from a restriction against overlapping derivations. In order to achieve such nonoverlapping derivations, an Unmerge operation may remove previously created structure.

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