UC Santa Cruz

This dissertation investigates comparatives and superlatives in Japanese from a crosslinguistic perspective. The central question concerns how natural languages encode comparison. Drawing on new empirical evidence from Japanese, this dissertation argues that the variation observed in comparatives and superlatives can be derived from a unified semantic core. Specifically, comparison in natural language is built on a single primitive ordering relation, ER, which constitutes the core meaning of both comparatives and superlatives. Apparent variation across these constructions arises from two independent sources: (i) the elements with which ER combines, and (ii) differences in syntactic derivation.Within comparatives, this dissertation shows that the surface differences between phrasal and clausal comparatives arise from distinct syntax, while both constructions are based on the same primitive ER. Phrasal comparatives are argued to involve ellipsis within the standard phrase, although the size of the elided constituent differs from that in clausal comparatives. Superlatives are derived from the same underlying syntax as phrasal comparatives, but they differ crucially in that, in Japanese, ER combines with an additional superlative element, ichiban, which yields a maximality operator (MAX). The decomposition of MAX explains lexical variation in superlative morphology both within Japanese and across languages. This analysis contrasts with much of the existing literature, where the meanings of comparatives and superlatives are largely encoded in the comparative or superlative morphemes themselves.Japanese plays a central role in motivating this analysis. Unlike languages such as English, Japanese overtly reflects the scope of degree expressions in syntax. In comparatives, the scope of ER is reflected by the position of the standard phrase (i.e., yori-phrase, corresponding to the English than-phrase), while in superlatives, the surface positions of superlative morphemes, ichiban and mottomo, indicate their scope positions. Contrary to the view that Japanese lacks direct comparison of degrees on a scale, the evidence presented here shows that Japanese provides particularly clear evidence for the scope of degree expressions.