Abstract

The most common analyses of comparatives make use of degrees, abstract objects that form a total ordering. In this paper, I will explore a novel analysis of comparatives in which the central notion is not the notion of a degree, but rather the notion of a concrete property manifestation, a particularized property, or a trope, as it is most commonly called in contemporary metaphysics. This trope-based analysis, I argue, has some major conceptual and empirical advantages over a degree-based account. A degree-based analysis of (1a) looks as in (1b) (Cresswell 1976, von Stechow 1984) or (1c) (Pinkal 1989, Moltmann 1992), with the adjective being taken to express a relation between objects and degrees.