Towards a cross-linguistic typology of marking polarity in embedded degree clauses
- The article focuses on comparative complementisers in comparative clauses expressing inequality in various languages, with particular attention paid to their role as lexicalising negative polarity. I argue that the relevant property follows from degree semantics, in that the comparative subclause encodes the inequality of the degree expressed by a matrix clausal element and the one expressed by the comparative operator. Just like ordinary negation, this has to be encoded overtly; however, as it does not constitute an instance of genuine clausal negation, the property cannot be encoded by an operator, and hence must be realised on a functional head, which is either the complementiser or a separate polarity head.
