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Article published In:
Linguistics in the Netherlands 2016
Edited by Jenny Audring and Sander Lestrade
[Linguistics in the Netherlands 33] 2016
► pp. 70–88

Phrasal and clausal comparatives in Dutch

| University of Groningen
This paper presents a new analysis of Dutch comparatives and argues that they should be classified into phrasal and clausal comparatives (as e.g. Hankamer (1973) argues for English). Arguments for this classification come from differences in case marking and island effects. Merchant (2009) notes the same island effects in Greek comparatives, and by applying his analysis to Dutch we can explain the differences between the Dutch phrasal and clausal comparatives. Crucial in this analysis is the ellipsis of underlying structure, not only in the reduced clausal comparative, but also in the phrasal comparative, which reflects the similarity in their interpretation.
Keywords: Dutch comparative constructions, clausal comparatives, phrasal comparatives, syntactic islands, ellipsis, syntax
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Similarities between Dutch and Greek comparatives
  • 3.Classifying Dutch comparatives
  • 4. Merchant’s (2009) analysis of Greek comparatives
    • 4.1Greek reduced clausal comparatives
    • 4.2Greek phrasal comparatives
  • 5. Merchant’s (2009) analysis applied to Dutch
    • 5.1Dutch phrasal comparatives
    • 5.2Dutch (reduced) clausal comparatives
      • 5.2.1Optionality and ellipsis of dat
    • 5.3Dutch ambiguous transitive comparatives
  • 6.Related puzzles
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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Published online: 21 December 2016
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/avt.33.06lin
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