Licensing Sentence-Internal Readings in English - An Experimental Study

Adjectives of comparison (AOCs) like same, different and similar can compare two elements sentence-internally, i.e., without referring to any previously introduced element. This reading is licensed only if a semantically plural NP is present. We argue in this paper that it is incorrect to describe a particular NP as either licensing or not licensing the sentence-internal reading of a specific AOC: licensing is more fine-grained. We use experimental methods to establish which NPs license which AOCs and to what extent and we show how the results can be interpreted against the background of a formal semantic analysis of AOCs. Finally, we argue that using Bayesian methods to analyze this kind of data has an advantage over the more traditional, frequentist approach.