Abstract

We propose an account of interpretive effects involving _same_ and _different_, relying on two claims: the first is that _same_ and _different_ are able to take scope, and the second is that they are presuppositional. On this account, _same_ and _different_ are decomposed into two parts: an additive operator TOO and a (non-)identity predicate. We argue that this account provides a more parsimonious account of well-known properties of _same_ and _different_, such as the distinction between internal and external readings, as well as the parallelism effects discovered by Hardt and Mikkelsen (Linguist Philos 38:289–314, 2015). We also present a solution to a previously unexplained puzzle involving comparatives.