This
paper
considers
the
question
of
whether
the
marked
members
of
antonym
pairs
like
long
–
short
are
decomposed
in
the
syntax.
Daniel
Büring
has
recently
updated
and
substantially
expanded
an
argument
first
envisaged
by
Rullmann
(1995),
supporting
the
conclusion
that
the
surface
form
short
sometimes
spells
out
a
collocation
of
two
abstract
items
little
and
long
which
do
not
form
a
semantic
constituent
(Büring
2007a,
b).
I
will
quickly
review
Büring’s
arguments
and
the
analysis
that
he
takes
them
to
support.
I
then
show
that
this
analysis
overgenerates
unattested
readings
in
a
class
of
examples
where
shorter
is
systematically
not
equivalent
to
less
long
.
These
data
were
previously
discussed
in
Heim
(2006),
where
they
led
me
to
conclude
that
antonyms
are
not
decomposed