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comp 3/3: different constituents vs. location of comparison

Subj: different constituents vs. location of comparison
Date: 2002-06-30
To: ram@hidden.email

Rick,
I thought that the comparative was applied to whatever was different, so I took "more read" and "read" to be the same verb, especially since in some of them you use "read" vs. "write".  The same for "more novels" vs. "novels". 

To use slightly different examples, I interpreted each of your eight possibilities as two sentences joined by "more than".  The first sentence stays the same, while the second shows the different constituents:

Women read fiction      more than ...

1 women read fiction   -   no change (and false!)
2 women read poetry   -   object
3 men read fiction   -   subject
4 men read poetry   -   subject, object
5 women write fiction   -   verb
6 women write poetry   -   verb, object
7 men write fiction   -   verb, subject
8 men write poetry   -   verb, subject, object

Since some of your different constituents don't require a comparative (e.g., John vs. Bill, novels vs. short stories), then none of them do.  Then we are left with sentences like "John reads novels vs. Bill writes short stories" in which there is no comparative at all.  Otherwise, how do you know which constituent to make comparative?

If "more reads" is considered different from "reads", then all of the following variations should be possible:

S (more women) read fiction vs. women read fiction
O women read (more fiction) vs. women read fiction
V women (more read) fiction vs. women read fiction
SO (more women) read (more fiction) vs. women read fiction
VO more women (more read) (more fiction) vs. women read fiction
VS (more women) (more read) fiction vs. women read fiction
VSO (more women) (more read) (more fiction) vs. women read fiction

In other words, each of the original eight possibilities (based on which constituents changed) in turn has eight more possibilities (based on which of the constituents gets a comparative). 

Taking the change in constituent (A) vs. location of comparative (B), your eight possibilities look like this:
         A          B
1      ---         ---
2      --O       --O
3      -S-       -S-
4      -S-       --O
5      V--       V--
6      --O       V--
7      -S-       V--
8      VSO     V--

Steven