Unraveling syntactic puzzles of comparative correlatives

In a comparative correlative construction, such as The less you read, the stupider you are, the two clauses must both be finite, like a root clause; but neither can stand alone, like a subordinate clause. The construction shares significant formal properties with one type of coordinate construction, such as You drink another can of beer and I’m leaving. The paper argues that a comparative correlative construction and such a coordinate construction have the same syntactic structure. In this structure, a functional element that is directly merged with a conjunct or a modifier occurs. Moreover, the construction-specific formatives, such as the clause-initial the or the Mandarin predicate-initial yue ‘more’, is analyzed as the result of the spanning of this functional element with another functional element in the clause. Furthermore, the pairing of the formatives in the construction comes from the Double Marking of this functional element.