Variation in Spanish clausal standards of comparison

Abstract

Comparative constructions express a contrast between the information contained in two terms belonging to different categories. The first term is a quantificational phrase and the second, known as the standard of comparison, takes the form of nominal, adverbial or prepositional phrases, or different types of clauses, which can be relative, reduced or contain ellipsis. While a general consensus has been reached on the typological properties subject to crosslinguistic variation, dialectal variation observed in the expression of these constructions has only recently begun to be explored. Spanish comparatives which are productive in one variety might be only marginally acceptable or agrammatical in another. An analysis of the patterns of variation that appear between different varieties of Spanish is presented with the aim to evaluate the hypothesis that the variation observed might be pointing at different stages in a diachronic process of change. American varieties of Spanish are in different stages as compared to each other, and to European Spanish, for example. The relation between cycles of diachronic change and (synchronic) variation between different dialects of Spanish has already been attested for different kinds of phenomena, such as accusative clitic doubling.