Open AccessIncremental `more'
Author(s) -
Guillaume Thomas
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
proceedings from semantics and linguistic theory
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2163-5951
pISSN - 2163-5943
DOI - 10.3765/salt.v20i0.2558
Subject(s) - assertion , sentence , interpretation (philosophy) , semantics (computer science) , morpheme , operator (biology) , computer science , abstract interpretation , natural language processing , linguistics , mathematics , algorithm , philosophy , programming language , biology , biochemistry , repressor , transcription factor , gene
The morpheme `more' has been mostly studied as a comparative operator. However, it appears that more can be used non comparatively, as in the following sentence: "It rained for three hours this morning, and it rained a little more in the afternoon." There is an interpretation of this sentence in which the second conjunct is an assertion that it rained in the afternoon, possibly less than three hours. We call this use of `more' incremental. We argue that incremental `more' is a pluractional additive operator. Evidence for such a pluractional semantics comes from the analysis of some restrictions on the use of incremental `more' with stative predicates.