Phrasal and clausal comparatives in Dutch

This paper presents a new analysis of Dutch comparatives and argues that they should be classified into phrasal and clausal comparatives (as e.g. Hankamer (1973) argues for English). Arguments for this classification come from differences in case marking and island effects. Merchant (2009) notes the same island effects in Greek comparatives, and by applying his analysis to Dutch we can explain the differences between the Dutch phrasal and clausal comparatives. Crucial in this analysis is the ellipsis of underlying structure, not only in the reduced clausal comparative, but also in the phrasal comparative, which reflects the similarity in their interpretation.