A clausal analysis of a class of phrasal comparatives in Japanese

Abstract

This paper argues that a class of Japanese phrasal comparatives involves reduced clausal structure. Bhatt and Takahashi (2007, 2011) argue that Japanese requires both a 2-place and a 3-place -er, with the former deriving clausal comparatives and the latter deriving phrasal comparatives. I argue instead that the relevant phrasal comparatives can be derived uniformly with a 2-place -er. The argument comes from two readings of Japanese phrasal comparatives: a narrow reading, in which the standard is associated with a DP-internal nominal, and a wide reading, in which it is associated with a DP-external argument. I show that these readings correspond to two independently motivated structures for Japanese adjectival modification: an Indirect Modification structure and a Direct Modification structure. The distribution of the readings follows from the interaction between these structures and the scope position of -er: the narrow reading is derived when -er takes scope inside a relative clause, whereas the wide reading is derived when -er takes scope in the matrix clause. To implement this scope-based analysis with a 2-place -er, I follow Pancheva (2006, 2009) in allowing yori-phrases to contain reduced clausal material smaller than a full CP, specifically vP. On this view, the different readings arise from different scope positions of the same 2-place -er within the two types of modification structures.