The Linguistics Department Colloquium Series 2007

Dr. Marcin Morzycki

Michigan State University

Thursday, October 11th

4:30 PM in Wells 607

Differential Degrees And Cross-Categorial Measure-Phrase Modification

Recent work on the semantics of measure phrases has grappled with the insight that expressions like _six feet tall_---often taken to be the prototypical and most theoretically revealing cases of MP modification---are in fact unusual, and that differential MPs (as in _six feet taller_) are actually the unmarked case (Schwarzschild 2005 directly, and more indirectly Kennedy & Levin (to appear) and Svenonius & Kennedy 2006). This talk provides further evidence for this view, primarily from the grammar of cross-categorial _by_ MPs (_taller by six feet_), and addresses these facts by drawing a sortal distinction between differential degrees and ordinary ones in which differential MP modification emerges as grammatically simpler than its non-differential counterpart.

References

Kennedy, Christopher & Beth Levin. To appear. 'Measure of change: The adjectival core of degree achievements'. In Christopher Kennedy & Louise McNally (eds.), Adjectives and Adverbs: Syntax, Semantics, and Discourse. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Schwarzschild, Roger. 2005. 'Measure phrases as modifiers of adjectives'. In L'adjectif, Recherches Linguistiques de Vincennes, vol. 35, pp. 207--228.

Svenonius, Peter & Christopher Kennedy. 2006. 'Northern Norwegian degree questions and the syntax of measurement'. In Mara Frascarelli (ed.), Phases of Interpretation, Studies in Generative Grammar, vol. 61. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin.