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Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 13: Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’ 29, Nijmegen
Edited by Janine Berns, Haike Jacobs and Dominique Nouveau
[Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 13] 2018
► pp. 259–278

For an overt movement analysis of comparison at a distance in French

| University of Massachussetts at Amherst

This paper focuses on nominal comparative constructions in European French, specifically on constructions in which the comparative quantifier can appear separated from its nominal restrictor (hence the name Comparison At a Distance). One question is whether the nominal comparative construction in which the quantifier is separated from its restrictor is derivationally related to the corresponding construction in which the quantifier is adjacent to its restrictor (movement analysis) or whether those two constructions are not derivationally related (base-generation analysis). I show that there are arguments in favor of analyzing CAD as a case of overt quantifier movement (locality restrictions) and arguments against a base-generation analysis (reconstruction). Furthermore, I show that nominal comparative quantifiers that can be separated from their restrictor have the same locality restrictions as the quantifier tout ‘everything’, which has been argued to move (Kayne 1975), suggesting that tout and comparative quantifiers are amenable to the same movement rule.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.No support for base-generation analysis
  • 3.Reconstruction facts
  • 4.Locality restrictions
    • 4.1Where can deP be?
    • 4.2How distant can Q and deP be?
    • 4.3Intervention
  • 5.Comparison with tout ‘everything’
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 13 July 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/rllt.13.16pas
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2023. Quantification at a distance and grammatical illusions in French. Syntax DOI logo

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