A seeming violation to the monotonicity constraint in Spanish verbal comparatives

Abstract

Spanish verbal comparatives with (correr más ‘run more’) can be interpreted in terms of SPEED with a subset of manner of motion predicates. This fact poses a challenge to the monotonicity constraint (Schwarzschild, 2006) because SPEED is not a part-whole structure preserving dimension unlike DURATION. I argue that the data are best explained if más combines with an underspecified measure function that is not restricted to be only resolved by quantity part-whole tracking dimensions. I argue that the resolution of this null measure function is syntactically determined.