Comparatives Combined with Additive Particles: The Case of German 'noch'

Abstract

This paper investigates comparatives combined with the German particle noch ('still'). Such comparatives trigger – in some but not all contexts – the entailment that the comparison base exceeds the standard of the comparison class, which is surprising since comparatives in general are assumed to be insensitive to the standard of the comparison class. It is shown that the entailment results from the fact that comparatives combined with noch are anaphoric. An interpretation is proposed which accounts for the fact that comparative noch is both scalar and additive.