A Typology of Word CategoriesAlthough the accompanying element to most does not look much like a clause, its
interpretation is of all the things that are regrettable, which is more clause like. These
observations also lead us to consider the inflectional comparative and superlative:
(176) a so nice nicer so nicer
b as tall tallest as tallest
c cuter [than I am]
d strongest [of all]
Clearly, these behave exactly like the periphrastic constructions, and hence would
seem to involve a degree adverb. The obvious choice would be the comparative and
superlative morphemes themselves, which would suggest an analysis similar to what
was proposed for verbal inflections: the comparative and superlative are independent
lexical elements which are inserted into an expression separately into the degree
adverb position and then by a syntactic process become attached to the adjective:
(177) a -er tight Æ – tight-er –
b -est black Æ – black-est –
Below, we can see a selection of lexical entries for degree adverbs:(178) so category: [+F, +N, +V]
subcat: [adjectival]
more category: [+F, +N, +V]
subcat: [adjectival]
-er category: [+F, +N, +V]
subcat: [adjectival]
3.5.4 Complementisers
The final word category we will consider in this section is the complementiser. This
category is used to introduce clauses of one type or another. For now, we can take a
clause as a coherent part of an expression that contains an inflection, though this will
be made more precise later in the book. Examples of complementisers are:
(179) a I know [that I am right]
b I was hoping [for you to phone]
c I wonder [if you would lend me the money]
The remaining set of categorial features that has not been assigned to a category is
[+F, –N, –V], that is ‘functional prepositions’. One argument for treating
complementisers as functional prepositions is the fact that at least one of them, for, has
certain prepositional properties (it is sometimes called the prepositional
complementiser). Note that prepositions take nominal complements that are always in
the accusative Case, and never in the nominative:
(180) a to/with/for/by/etc. him
b *to/with/for/by/etc he