Eric Potsdam (University of Florida) will give the department colloquium on March 29 at 3:30 in Machmer E 37. A title and abstract follow.
Malagasy Phrasal Comparatives
Few question the existence of clausal comparatives—comparatives in which the constituent following ‘than’ shows clausal syntax, which may have been reduced by ellipsis (Bresnan 1973 and others). What remains unresolved is whether all comparatives must be analyzed in this way. At stake is the analysis of phrasal comparatives, such as the Malagasy (Austronesian, Madagascar) comparative in (1).
(1) lava noho ilay zaza Rabe
tall than that child Rabe
‘Rabe is taller than that child’
This talk contrasts a direct analysis of Malagasy comparatives with a number of extant reduced clauses analyses (Lechner 2004, Pancheva 2006, Merchant 2009). Evidence from a wide range of phenomena—binding theory, scope, case, NPIs, islands, gapping, and Malagasy-specific syntactic restrictions, among others—argues for a direct analysis for Malagasy. Although direct analyses have been proposed for other languages, such as English, Chinese, and Japanese, they have been questioned in most cases. Thus the number of clear cases is still quite small (i.e. Hindi (Bhatt & Takahashi 2011)). This result has implications for the syntax-semantics interface and issues of cross-linguistic variation.
