Subset Comparatives as Comparative Quantifiers

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the meaning of the “subset comparative” construction: John saw more phonologists than just Mary seems to assert that John saw more than one phonologist, and presuppose that John saw Mary (the prejacent) and that Mary is a phonologist. Together, the assertion and the two presuppositions entail that John saw other phonologists in addition to Mary. In this paper, I argue that the meaning can be derived by an extension of the analysis originally proposed by Hackl (2000) for comparative quantifiers like more than three.