story of 'er'

The English comparative -er is a particular challenge for contemporary morphological analysis. The comparative and superlative in English are in an ABB suppletion relationship, which strongly suggests a containment relationship. This in turn suggests that -er and -est are in competition with each other. This is a challenge for both morphemic and word-based models of morphology. Word-based models are particularly challenged by competition between morphological and periphrastic exponence. Morphemic models, like LRFG (the model assumed here), have to deal with complex constraints on the affixal form. More and -er are in (mostly) complementary distribution, suggesting that they are allomorphs. The blocking of -er is not only triggered by phonology, but also by syntactic triggers and semantic triggers. Sometimes pure complementarity fails and both more and -er are licit (I am even madder and I am even more mad), but it does so in predictable ways (in contrast to true optionality). The net of all these properties is that the appearance of -er is the result of a complex competition involving two competitors (more and -er) and phonological, semantic, and syntactic conditions restricting their distributions.