Indirect Strategy and Interpretive Economy in Phrasal Yorimo and Bi-Comparatives.

The semantics of Japanese yorimo-comparatives remained somewhat mysterious until Beck et al. (2004) proposed a contextdependent analysis that accounted for the peculiar behavior of clausal yorimo-comparatives. Despite its contribution, however, many arguments have been made against the idea of the contextdependent comparisons of yorimo-comparatives. Kennedy (2007a) and Sudo (2015) argue that yorimo-comparatives can still be captured within the framework of traditional compositional comparison. This study focuses on phrasal yorimo-comparatives and argues that context-dependent analysis remains a viable option. Phrasal yorimo-comparatives in Japanese and bi-comparatives in Mandarin Chinese are largely considered equivalents of phrasal more than-comparatives. However, I will first point out that phrasal yorimo/bi-comparatives behave more like compared to/im Vergleich zu "in comparison to"-constructions rather than more than-comparatives. I will argue that indirect strategy, another context-dependent analysis developed by Hohaus (2015), captures the behaviors of phrasal yorimo/bi-comparatives. Her framework of indirect strategy was originally proposed to explain the semantics of compared to/im Vergleich zu "in comparison to"- constructions; it also captures the behaviors of phrasal yorimo/bi-comparatives. This study further proposes that variations in judgments that arise in phrasal yorimo/bi-comparatives are explained by Interpretive Economy proposed by Kennedy (2007b). Such rule-governed mechanism enriches the framework of indirect strategy and makes it more plausible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]