An HPSG approach to English comparative inversion

Abstract

It has been analyzed that the word order of English comparative inversion is analogous to that of other subject-auxiliary inversions in that only a finite auxiliary verb can be followed by the subject. However, English comparative inversion should be distinguished from other inversions because the subject can be located between a cluster of auxiliary verbs and the non-auxiliary verb phrase in English comparative inversion. Existing analyses on subject-auxiliary inversion cannot account for this special kind of inversion. This paper proposes a new phrase type for English comparative inversion within the construction-based HPSG. In addition, I suggest that constraints on properties of lexemes participating in the new phrase type are governed by the construction-based approach, while the word order of English comparative inversion is determined by rules that the word order domain approach adopts. Also, it will be shown that these proposals can capture the word order of nor-inversion, as-inversion, and so-inversion as well as that of comparative inversion.