The story of 'er'

Abstract

The English comparative -er is a particular challenge for contemporary morphological analysis. The comparative and superlative in English are in an ABB suppletion relationship, which strongly suggests a containment relationship. This in turn suggests that -er and -est are in competition with each other. This is a challenge for both morphemic and word-based models of morphology. Word-based models are particularly challenged by competition between morphological and periphrastic exponence. Morphemic models, like L_RFG (the model assumed here), have to deal with complex constraints on the affixal form. More and -er are in (mostly) complementary distribution, suggesting that they are allomorphs. The blocking of -er is not only triggered by phonology, but also by syntactic triggers and semantic triggers. Sometimes pure complementarity fails and both more and -er are licit (I am even madder and I am even more mad), but it does so in predictable ways (in contrast to true optionality). The net of all these properties is that the appearance of -er is the result of a complex competition involving two competitors (more and -er) and phonological, semantic, and syntactic conditions restricting their distributions.