Much support and more

Abstract

This paper examines the semantics of much when it occurs as a dummy element, in so-called much support (Fred is diligent; in fact he is too much so) and more comparatives (more intelligent, where more = much + -er). It is shown that far from being anomalies, much support and more comparatives provide a clue to the correct analysis of much more generally: much is essentially contentless, serving only as a carrier of degree morphology. In short, much always acts as much support. These findings provide support for a theory of quantity adjectives (many, few, much and little) as predicates of scalar intervals, with the remainder of the content traditionally ascribed to them contributed instead by null syntactic elements and operations. The vacuous nature of much itself is also argued to account for its infelicity in unmodified form in many contexts (e.g. We bought much rice). © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.