Distributed Morphology Today: Morphemes for Morris Halle

4. More or Better: On the Derivation of Synthetic Comparatives and Superlatives in English

4 4.1 Introduction As illustrated in (1), English comparatives and superlatives can be synthetic, derived with the suffixes -er and -st, respectively, or analytic, requiring the freestanding morphemes more and most. While in some syntactic environments , such as metalinguistic comparison (see Bresnan 1973 and Kennedy 1999, among others), only analytic forms are possible, generally only “short” adjectives allow synthetic forms: (1) a. smarter, tallest, simplest, shallower . . . b. most intelligent, more prudent, most splendid, more beautiful . . . It is a standard assumption (see, e.g., Emonds 1976), which I also adopt here, that there is no interpretational difference between the bound morphemes -er and -st on the one hand, and the free morphemes more and most on the other. Traditionally (Corver 1997b), synthetic forms have been derived by the movement of A° to Deg°, with analytic forms arising from the insertion of the support morpheme much when head movement fails (much-support). Recently, however, an alternative proposal has relegated the derivation of synthetic comparatives and superlatives to a postsyntactic lowering operation: either Local Dislocation (Embick and Noyer 1999, 2001; Embick 2007a) or Morphological Merger (Bobaljik 2012). The derivation of synthetic forms by Affix Hopping has not been proposed.1 In this chapter I argue against lowering/postsyntactic approaches to the derivation of synthetic comparatives and superlatives by demonstrating that the evidence against the head-movement analysis adduced by Embick and Noyer is nondecisive and that a postsyntactic approach cannot account for the finer details of the distribution of synthetic and analytic forms. More or Better: On the Derivation of Synthetic Comparatives and Superlatives in English Ora Matushansky 60 Chapter 4 4.2 Against Local Dislocation As is well known, the formation of English synthetic comparatives and superlatives is subject to a prosodic constraint (Marantz 1988; Pesetsky 1979, 1985; Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, and Svartvik 1985; Sproat 1985): the -er/-est suffixes can only attach to one-foot stems (McCarthy and Prince 1993).2 In other words, only monosyllabic adjectives and disyllabic adjectives with a light second syllable (e.g., silly–sillier, yellow–yellower) can give rise to synthetic forms: (2) a. smarter, #more smart; brightest, #most bright b. *beautifuller, ✓ more beautiful; *intelligentest, ✓ most intelligent Embick and Noyer 1999, 2001 argue that deriving synthetic forms by head movement is incompatible with the “Late Insertion” hypothesis, according to which lexical roots are not present in syntax, but are inserted after the spell-out (Marantz 1994): since head movement occurs before Vocabulary Insertion, no effect from the choice of the lexical root is expected. Embick 2007a argues that the problem also extends to “early insertion” frameworks: syntax should not be sensitive to phonological properties of particular lexical items. Conversely , Local Dislocation, a postsyntactic operation applying to linearized structures, can easily be made sensitive to the phonological properties of the adjectival stem:3 (3) Local Dislocation rule for comparatives and superlatives (Embick 2007a, 25)4 Deg[CMPR,SUP]Ⱦ[. . .X. . .]a → [. . .X. . .]a⊕Deg[CMPR,SUP] (in English: where the phonological form of [. . .X. . .]a meets the relevant prosodic condition) The core property distinguishing Local Dislocation from both head movement and Affix Hopping is that the former occurs at or after Vocabulary Insertion . As a result, only Local Dislocation can be sensitive to the prosodic structure of individual lexical items. However, as argued by Bobaljik 2012, the problem is that Local Dislocation cannot deal with suppletion: crosslinguistically , synthetic comparatives and superlatives of adjectives such as good, bad, little and many/much are often suppletive, and English is obviously no exception: (4) a. good → better, best b. bad → worse, worst c. little → less, least d. many/much → more, most More or Better 61 Since the Local Dislocation rule in (3) contains a reference to the phonological form of the adjective in question, the adjectival stem must be spelled out before combining with the comparative/superlative suffix, which incorrectly predicts that stem suppletion, as in (4a), should be impossible. To avoid this outcome, it could be suggested that Vocabulary Insertion into the complex head [a v]a is conditioned by the presence of a comparative/superlative morpheme in the same maximal projection. The empirical problem with such a solution is obvious when we realize that the interaction between the choice of the analytic or the synthetic form and the availability of suppletion should give rise to four options, of which is missing: precisely the one that is enabled if Vocabulary Insertion can be conditioned from outside the...