The English ‘as…as’ Equative Construction

Abstract

This paper attempts to describe the form of the English ‘as…as’ equative construction and to propose its formal classification. First, definitions and classifications of the equative construction as a comparison, presented in different linguistic accounts, are summarised and discussed. Second, the paper provides an overview of the semantic components and grammatical morphemes of the ‘as…as’ equative construction. Moreover, this paper lays out principles underlying ellipsis in the equative construction and, subsequently, concentrates on the formal representation of each semantic component and grammatical morpheme. In the final section, the ‘as…as’ equative construction is classified based on the formal representation of the PARAMETER.