In this short squib, Kai von Fintel and I express our puzzlement over the role of the German comparative form “eher” in metalinguistic and modal comparisons. We can’t do this alone. We have data, we have observations, we have speculations, but we need you to tell us what to do with them. We want to sit down with you and work on this together

Kratzer, Angelika

von Fintel, Kai

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University of Massachusetts AmherstScholarWorks@UMass AmherstLinguistics Department Faculty Publication Series Linguistics2014Modal Comparisons: Two Dilettantes in Search ofan ExpertKai von FintelAngelika KratzerUniversity of Massachusetts AmherstFollow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/linguist_faculty_pubsPart of the Arts and Humanities CommonsThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Linguistics at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion inLinguistics Department Faculty Publication Series by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, pleasecontact scholarworks@library.umass.edu.von Fintel, Kai & Angelika Kratzer (2014). Modal Comparisons: Two Dilettantes in Search of an Expert. In Luka Crnic and UliSauerland (eds.): The At and Craft of Semantics: A Festschrift for Irene Heim. MITWPL 70, 175-179.MODAL COMPARISONS:TWO DILLETANTES IN SEARCH OF AN EXPERT⇤KAI VON FINTEL AND ANGELIKA KRATZERMassachusetts Institute of Technology and University of Massachusetts at AmherstAbstractWe express our puzzlement over the role of the German comparative form “eher” inmetalinguistic and modal comparisons. We can’t do this alone. We have data, we haveobservations, we have speculations, but we need you to tell us what to do with them. Wewant to sit down with you and work on this together.The German word “eher” can express temporal comparisons roughly meaning “earlier than” or“before”:1(1) DieTheSchildkrötetortoisewarwaseherearlieramat-theZielgoalalsthanAchilles.Achilles‘The tortoise reached the goal before Achilles.’As happens all the time, “eher” has acquired uses beyond the temporal domain. One strikinguse seems to fall under what Morzycki (2011) classified as ‘metalinguistic’ comparisons:(2) MeinMyAutocaristisehermoreflottcoolalsthanschnell.fast‘My car is more on the cool side than on the fast side.’⇤We have been puzzling over the role of “eher” in metalinguistic and modal comparisons for quite a while. Wethank Chris Kennedy, Pete Klecha and Marcin Morzycki for conversations where we shared our bafflement with them.Elena Herburger and Aynat Rubinstein have independently embarked on a research project on “eher” (Herburger andRubinstein 2014). This is not the time to compare our preliminary conclusions in any detail but we will draw on theirWCCFL handout in a few places.1Etymologically, “eher” appears to be the comparative to an old Germanic word meaning “early”, cf. Gothic “air”,related to the Greek “™ri” ‘early, in the morning’ (see http://www.dwds.de/?qu=eher). The Southern German andAustrian adverb “eh” (‘anyway’) may be a backformation.© 2014 Kai von Fintel and Angelika Kratzer. In: Luka Crnicˇ and Uli Sauerland (eds.),The Art and Craft of Semantics: A Festschrift for Irene Heim, vol. 1, MITWPL 70, pp. 175–179(3) MeinMyAutocarwarwasehermorelangsamslowalsthanschnell.fast‘My car was more on the slow side than on the fast side.’(4) MeinMyAutocarwarwasehermorelangsam.slow‘My car was more on the slow side.’(5) MeinMyAutocarwarwasehermorelangsamslowalsthandeinyourMotorrad.motorbike‘My car’s performance was a clearer case of slowness than your motorbike’s performance.’According to Morzycki, ‘metalinguistic’ comparatives differ from ‘ordinary’ comparatives inrelying on scales of imprecision or ‘pragmatic slack’ in the sense of Lasersohn (1999). There is aclear difference between ordinary comparatives and comparatives with “eher”: (6) and (7) do notmean the same.(6) EllaEllaistisgrössertalleralsthanGinger.Ginger(7) EllaEllaistisehermoregrosstallalsthanGinger.Ginger‘Ella is a clearer case of tallness than Ginger.’(7) doesn’t sound right if the two girls are both giants or dwarves (hence clear examples orcounterexamples of tallness), or if one is a dwarf and the other is a giant, even if Ella is indeed tallerthan Ginger. For (7) to be acceptable, both Ella and Ginger have to be borderline cases of tallness.That’s a necessary, but not a sufficient condition. (7) is also unacceptable if Ella and Ginger areboth borderline cases of tallness, but they are very close in height. Under those circumstances, (8)is unacceptable, too:(8) ImInVergleichcomparisonzutoGingerGingeristisEllaEllaehermoregross.tall.‘In comparison to Ginger, Ella is more on the tall side.’If Ella and Ginger are very close in height, no reasonable way of making the predicate “tall”precise would place Ella in its positive and Ginger in its negative extension. Doing so would, infact, violate the Similarity Constraint of Fara (2000), which Kennedy (2011) formulates as follows:The Similarity Constraint. When x and y differ to only a very small degree in the property that avague predicate g is used to express, we are unable or unwilling to judge the proposition that x isg true and that y is g false.No such problem arises with the ordinary comparative in (6), which can be used even if the heightdifference is minuscule. Kennedy (2011) suggests that this feature of ordinary comparatives throws176 Kai von Fintel and Angelika Kratzerdoubt on a semantics for such comparatives that is based on theories of vagueness (such as theproposals by Kamp (1975), Klein (1980), van Rooij (2011)). We take no position on this quarrel.The point here is that “eher” comparatives differ strikingly from ordinary comparatives, and thereis no question that mechanisms like vagueness resolution or pragmatic slack management play arole for the uses of “eher” illustrated in (2) to (8).The difference between “eher” comparatives and ordinary comparatives also shows up with‘non-gradable’ predicates. Predicates like “schwanger” (pregnant) or “tot” (dead) do not appear inthe ordinary comparative. The absence of “schwangerer” (pregnant-er) may be partly because ofthe “er”-doubling but that can’t begin to explain the severe ungrammaticality of “toter” (dead-er):2(9) ?EllaEllaistisschwangerermore pregnantalsthanGinger.Ginger(10) *MeinMyPatientpatientististotermore deadalsthandeiner.yours.The “eher”-comparative is fine even with non-gradable predicates and as before, there is ametalinguistic comparison interpretation.(11) EllaEllaistisehermoreschwangerpregnantalsthanGinger.Ginger‘Ella is a clearer case of a pregnant woman than Ginger.’(12) MeinMyPatientpatientistisehermoretotdeadalsthandeiner.yours‘My patient is a clearer case of a dead person than mine.’In addition to temporal and metalinguistic interpretations, “eher” can also express what seem tobe modal comparisons. In fact, all sentences we have looked at so far can have modal comparisoninterpretations. Consider (7), for example. Suppose you got to know Ella and Ginger as littlegirls and haven’t seen either one of them in many years. You are wondering what they may looklike. Given that Ella’s parents were tall, but Ginger’s parents were not, you may say (7). Whatwe have here is an epistemic comparison: the evidence supports the hypothesis that Ella is tallbetter than the hypothesis that Ginger is tall. In other words: Ella is more likely to be tall thanGinger. While the temporal interpretation feels clearly distinct from both the metalinguistic andthe modal comparison interpretation of “eher”, there is a question whether the metalinguistic andmodal comparison interpretations correspond to two genuinely distinct readings. This, then, is ourfirst question:Question 1. Is “eher” genuinely ambiguous between a metalinguistic and a modal comparisonreading?Our second question relates to what happens when “eher” appears in a sentence that alreadycontains a modal expression. Here we are up for a surprise: (13), (14), and (15) are very close in2Herburger and Rubinstein mark sentences like (9) with a star.Modal Comparisons 177meaning, and seem to be truth-conditionally equivalent, even though (14) has a possibility modal,(15) has a necessity modal, and (13) has no overt modal at all.(13) DasThisistisehermoreeineajapanischeJapanesealsthaneineachinesischeChineseMaschine.machine.‘This is more likely a Japanese than a Chinese machine.’(14) DasThiskannmightehermoreeineajapanischeJapanesealsthaneineachinesischeChineseMaschinemachinesein.be.‘This is more likely a Japanese than a Chinese machine.’(15) DasThismussmustehermoreeineajapanischeJapanesealsthaneineachinesischeChineseMaschinemachinesein.be.‘This is more likely a Japanese than a Chinese machine.’Question 2. How exactly does “eher” interact with overt or covert modals so as to deliver thetruth-conditional equivalence of (13) to (15)?Our third and last question relates to subtle differences between modal comparisons with “eher”and modal comparisons with gradable adjectives like “likely”, “desirable”, or “feasible”.(16) a. Her moving to Paris is more likely than his leaving Rome (is).b. Her moving to Paris is more likely than you think (it is).c. His leaving Rome is more desirable than (it is) feasible.(17) JocklJocklkanncanehermoreininAufhausenAufhausengewesenbeensein,bealsthanJacklJacklininMindelheim.Mindelheim.‘Jockl is more likely to have been in Aufhausen than Jackl in Mindelheim.’(18) JocklJocklkanncandentheMordmurderehermorebegangencommittedhabenhavealsthandertheRichterjudgedenkt.thinks.‘Jockl is more likely to have committed the murder than the judge thinks.’(19) *JocklJocklwolltewanteddiesenthisMordmurderehermorebegehencommitalsthanerhekonnte.could.‘Jockl was more desirous than capable of committing this murder.’We have starred (19) to indicate that it cannot have a modal comparison reading. It does have atemporal reading (“the time such that Jockl wanted to commit the murder at that time was earlierthan the time at which he was capable of commiting it”). The puzzle is why the modal readingis absent in (19). (16c) shows that, in contrast, analogous cross-scalar modal comparisons areperfectly well-formed with gradable adjectives.178 Kai von Fintel and Angelika KratzerQuestion 3. Why are modal comparisons with “eher” more restricted than ordinary modalcomparisons with gradable modal adjectives?We have no answers, which is why we need help from an expert on degree semantics. We couldspeculate and reveal our suspicions, but that may be even more embarrassing. Please join us andset us straight.ReferencesFara, Delia Graff. 2000. Shifting sands: An interest-relative theory of vagueness. PhilosophicalTopics 20:45–81.Herburger, Elena, and Aynat Rubinstein. 2014. Is ‘more possible’ more possible in German?Handout from a talk at WCCFL 32, USC, March 9, 2014.Kamp, Hans. 1975. Two theories about adjectives. In Formal semantics of natural language, ed.Edward Keenan, 123–155. Cambridge University Press.Kennedy, Christopher. 2011. Vagueness and comparison. In Vagueness and language use, ed. PaulEgré and Nathan Klinedinst. Palgrave Macmillan.Klein, Ewan. 1980. A semantics for positive and comparative adjectives. Linguistics andPhilosophy 4:1–45.Lasersohn, Peter. 1999. Pragmatic halos. Language 75:522–551.Morzycki, Marcin. 2011. Metalinguistic comparison in an alternative semantics for imprecision.Natural Language Semantics 19:39–86.van Rooij, Robert. 2011. Implicit versus explicit comparatives. In Vagueness and language use,ed. Paul Egré and Nathan Klinedinst. Palgrave Macmillan.Modal Comparisons 179

Modal Comparisons: Two Dilettantes in Search of an Expert

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