Clausal versus phrasal comparatives in Latin

Abstract Latin, like several other Indo-European languages, resorts to (at least) two distinct syntactic patterns to form comparative complementation: clausal comparatives, where the degree taken as the standard of comparison is expressed by a full or reduced clause introduced by a particle, generally quam ; phrasal comparatives, where the standard of comparison is represented by a single phrase, typically an NP or a DP, marked for the ablative case. The aim of this contribution, couched within the Principles and Parameters framework, is to clarify the derivation of these two constructions. In fact, the analytic options available turn out to be quite restricted. There is little doubt that all particle constructions originate as full clauses and can be reduced/elided when the lexical/structural environment allows it. As for the ablative construction, the direct analysis, in which the case-marked nominal is directly inserted in the immediate vicinity of the comparative word X- er , is quite natural. However, following recent analyses developed for other languages, we will argue that phrasal comparatives are also derived from clauses in which the CP layer is silent, except for its specifier, which is the position in which the standard is marked for the ablative case. This analysis succeeds in transparently representing and explaining the quite unusual restriction formulated by some Latin scholars, according to which the ablative competes with the quam construction only when it represents what would be a nominative or an accusative in a quam -clause. Our conclusions are supported by a careful analysis of quam- constructions (Section 2), where distributional properties, the behavior of reflexives and of negative polarity items, and the reduction processes involved are precisely explored, and by a precise account of the case-construction (Section 3), in which the structure behind it is carefully probed, keeping in mind the claim that the restrictions it obeys reflect the effect of general morphological and syntactic formal principles.