1. Cf. on this point A. Ibrahim: “Y-a-t-il deux manieres de dire la meme chose”, La nouvelle revue du Caire (1978), No. 2.
2. Already formulated in O. Ducrot: “Peu et un peu”, 1970.
3. The formulation will be found in Anscombre-Ducrot, 1983.
4. Here we are following a suggestion by R. Zuber.
5. In this paper, we only consider the case in which the comparative structure occurs with Peter as its topic. When it occurs with Mary as its topic, the equivalence of heights leads to a conclusion which could be drawn from “Mary is not tall”.