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Published in:
2010 | OriginalPaper | Chapter
Much Support and More
Author : Stephanie Solt
Published in: Logic, Language and Meaning
Publisher: Springer Berlin Heidelberg
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This paper examines the semantics of
much
when it occurs as a dummy element, in so-called
much
support (
Fred is diligent; in fact he is too much so
) and
more
comparatives (
more intelligent
, where
more
=
much
+
-er
). It is shown that far from being anomalies,
much
support and
more
comparatives provide a clue to the correct analysis of
much
more generally:
much
is essentially contentless, serving only as a carrier of degree morphology. In short,
much
always acts as
much
support. These findings provide support for a theory of quantity adjectives (
many
,
few
,
much
and
little
) as predicates of scalar intervals, with the remainder of the content traditionally ascribed to them contributed instead by null syntactic elements and operations. The vacuous nature of
much
itself is also argued to account for its infelicity in unmodified form in many contexts (e.g. ??
We bought much rice
).