Abstract
In this paper I examine certain gradable adjectives in Serbian, whose suppletive comparative forms display unexpected semantic properties. In particular, while these adjectives are ambiguous between intersective and non-intersective readings in the positive form, their suppletive comparative and superlative forms are limited to the non-intersective interpretation. These facts show, I argue, that in a theory like Distributed Morphology either adjectival roots or category-assigning heads they combine with come in semantic subtypes (i.e. are specified for certain semantic properties; Harley 2005, Anagnostopoulou and Samioti 2014). I show how the analysis I propose explains semantic properties of change-of-state verbs derived from these adjectives and why these adjectives are restricted to the intersective interpretation when their positive form takes the long-form (definite) inflection. I also provide an illustration of how Arregi and Nevins’s (2014) analysis of the so-called “disuppletive” roots, such worse/badder, can deal with the facts presented in this paper. Finally, I discuss implications of these facts in the context of Bobaljik’s (2012) approach to suppletive comparative morphology.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks are due to Jonathan Bobaljik and Yael Sharvit for many hours of discussion of this and related topics. The seminar on comparatives they co-taught at the University of Connecticut, while I was still a graduate student, was the original inspiration for this paper. I would also like to thank attendees and colleagues at Roots V for a helpful discussion of these ideas. Finally, I am very grateful to the editors and anonymous reviewers, whose comments and probing questions have undoubtedly improved this paper. All errors are mine.
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