GERGELY KANTOR

Eotvos Lornad University (HUNGRÍA)

On the left periphery of clausal comparative complements

Sintaxis / Sintax

The target of the presentation is to prove that the category of than in clausal comparative complements (CCCs; e.g., the door is higher than the desk is wide) is not Preposition, but Complementizer, and I also aim at investigating the structure of the left periphery of such subordinate clauses. Than is sometimes treated as a preposition (Kennedy 1997), mainly because in phrasal comparatives (e.g., he is taller than her), which fall out of the scope of the present research, it is followed by a DP.
Evidence comes from Hungarian, in which the left periphery of CCCs is full-fledged in terms of Rizzi (1997):

(1) Klára jobban kiszolgálta Annát, [mint Anna amennyire Klárát ha kiszolgálta volna].
Klára better served Anna-ACC than Anna what Klára-ACC if served would
‘Klára served Ann better than Ann would have served Klára.’

I claim that mint (than) expresses the comparative Force of the clause in brackets (Rizzi 1999). Anna and Klára are both topics, as their order is interchangeable, and they could also both precede or follow the wh-operator. Amennyire (what), the wh-operator is in focus position – which is reserved for non-contrastive focus in Hungarian; this position not being iterable, no other (non-contrastive) focussed element could appear in the left periphery in (1). The CP-domain is finished by the Fin node, here filled by the [+FIN] C0 ha (if).

Amennyire (what) is the comparative operator, providing the exact quantity of the standard value, serving as the basis of comparison (as in #little Sue is taller than what she was 2 years ago). On the basis of Izvorski (1995) and Lechner (1999:25), the comparative degree head in the matrix clause is assumed to accommodate two of its three “arguments” in its vicinity: the AP/AdvP responsible for the dimension of comparison is in the specifier of Deg, and the than-CP responsible for the standard value is generated as the complement of Deg, while the third argument (the reference value, which is compared to the standard value on the dimension) is provided in the matrix clause. However, the absolute degree head differs from its matrix counterpart, inasmuch as it is the comparative operator that is generated as its complement in the CCC (e.g., the rug is longer than (#what/OPi) the table is wide ti; Lechner 1999), the AP/AdvP (if overt) being in the spec of DegP.

Selected references:
Izvorski, R. (1995) DP-shell for Comparatives. ConSOLE III Proceedings:99-121. The Hague: Academic Press.
Kennedy, C. (1997) Projecting the Adjective. The Syntax and Semantics of Gradability and Comparison.
PhD diss. Santa Cruz, CA: UCSC.
Lechner, W. (1999) Comparatives and DP-structure. PhD diss. Amherst, MA: UMass.
Rizzi, L. (1997) On the Fine Structure of the Left Periphery. In: Haegeman, L. ed. Elements of Grammar. Dordrecht: Kluwer. pp. 281-337.
Rizzi, L. (1999) On the Position “Int(errogative)” in the Left Periphery of the Clause. Ms. Univ. di Siena.

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