Conflicting Constraints in the Comparative Cycle

Abstract

Present-day Dutch shows an alternation reflecting a transition from the use of the comparative particledan‘than’ toward the particleals‘as’ in comparisons of inequality. We argue that this transition—as well as the replacement ofdenn/dannbyalsin Early New High German, andals‘as’ bywie‘how’ in present-day German—results from a conflict between two competing principles, Economy and Iconicity. The conflict between these two constraints in German and Dutch gives rise to a cycle, in which having two particles—one for each construction—and having one particle for both, comparatives and equatives, alternate over time.*