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Understanding comparative alternation in y-adjectives: What else might we need?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2017

DEBORAH CHUA
DEBORAH CHUA*
Affiliation:
Victoria University of Wellington & National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University
*
Author’s address: National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, 1 Nanyang Walk, NIE2-02-11, Singapore 637616, Singaporedebchua2004@gmail.com; deborah.chua@nie.edu.sg
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Abstract

This paper investigates the contribution of lexical spreads (or type counts) of English comparative more and -er constructions to an understanding of comparative alternation in the $y$-adjectives, that is adjectives ending in an orthographic ${<}\text{y}>$ and an /i/ sound, e.g. lazy. Comparative $y$-adjective constructions from seven corpora of stage plays spanning from the 17th to the 20th century were analysed with mixed-effects modelling and correlations drawn between the comparatives of $y$-adjectives and those of other adjectives. The findings indicate that while morphological complexity in $y$-adjectives biases them towards more, more occurrences with $y$-adjectives may also be related to the lexical spread of more in disyllabic adjectives that are not $y$-ones. The findings suggest moreover that predictions of comparative forms based on the syntactic positioning of $y$-adjectives and the [±voiced] nature of their penultimate segments may make sense only with respect to the lexical spread of more in other English adjectives. To understand why $y$-adjectives seem divided between -er regularisation and adherence to the trend in English comparisons of a more bias, this paper proposes a need to supplement accounts of comparative alternation focused on the characteristics of $y$-adjectives with considerations related to the lexical spread of comparative constructions.

Keywords

adjectivecomparativecorpuslexicalmorphologytype count
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 54 , Issue 3 , 01 August 2018 , pp. 459 - 491
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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Footnotes

[1]

I would like to thank Laurie Bauer, Paul Warren and three anonymous referees of Journal of Linguistics for their comments on earlier versions of this paper.

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