Typology of Comparatives

PACLIC / The University of the Philippines Visayas Cebu College Cebu City, Philippines / November 20-22, 200

Typological overview of comparatives of inequality with an emphasis on old English "More than" expressions

El trabajo siguiente ofrece una descripción tipológica de los comparativos de desigualdad del tipo “more tan”. La lengua de enfoque es el inglés antiguo y con este fin, se han revisado y resumido rigurosamente investigaciones previas sobre el tema. Con el fin de situar los comparativos de desigualdad del inglés antiguo (Mitchell 1985) dentro de un marco lingüístico más amplio, se empieza con la descripción de una variedad representativa de las lenguas del mundo (Stassen 1984), posteriormente de las indoeuropeas, y finalmente de las germánicas (Helfenstein 1870). Asimismo, se incluye una breve discusión de los resultados de un estudio preliminar sobre todos los comparativos de desigualdad que aparecen en el poema épico “Beowulf”, a modo de ejemplificar la tipología expuesta anteriormente. Para concluir, se propone que el proceso de gramaticalización pueda servir como posible explicación a la evolución de la partícula comparativa desde una forma léxica a una gramatical.This paper provides a typological description of comparatives of inequality of the type “more than”. The emphasis is on this kind of comparatives in Old English, and to this end previous work on comparatives has been critically reviewed and synthesized: an account of comparatives is illustrated cross-linguistically (Stassen 1984), considering representative languages around the world, then Indo-European languages, and finally Germanic languages (Helfenstein 1870) in order to set the comparatives of inequality in Old English (Mitchell 1985) within a broader linguistic context. The results of a preliminary study on all comparatives of inequality in “Beowulf”, an Old English epic poem, are briefly discussed as they exemplify the typology of comparatives previously examined. To conclude, grammaticalization is proposed as the plausible explanation for evolution of the comparative particle from a lexical to a grammatical form.peerReviewe

Comparatives in melanesia:Concentric circles of convergence

Using a sample of 116 languages, this article investigates the typology of comparative constructions and their distribution in Melanesia, one of the world's least-understood linguistic areas. We present a rigorous definition of a comparative construction as a “comparative concept”, thereby excluding many constructions which have been considered functionally comparatives in Melanesia. Conjoined comparatives are shown to dominate at the core of the area on the island of New Guinea, while (monoclausal) exceed comparatives are found in the maritime regions around New Guinea. Outside of Melanesia adpositional and other comparative constructions including particle comparatives are most frequent in Austronesian languages. The unity of the conjoined comparative type in the core Melanesian area illustrates that, while morpho-syntactic profiles of Melanesian languages are heterogenous, significant convergence in the “ways of saying things” can be found across the region. Additionally, we find no cases of clause chaining constructions being used for encoding comparatives, even in canonical clause chaining languages of central New Guinea. Our findings thus offer no support for Stassen's claim of a correlation between temporal chaining type and comparative construction type. Instead we suggest that an areal preference for mini-clauses may explain the dominance of the conjoined comparative in Melanesia

Comparative constructions in Suansu and the languages of northeastern India

This paper provides a first description of comparative constructions in Suansu, an unreported Tibeto-Burman language spoken in northeastern India, and frames the characteristics of Suansu comparative constructions from a typological perspective (following Stassen’s 1985 classification). To this purpose, comparative constructions from a sample of 25 Tibeto-Burman languages of the area are collected in an ad-hoc designed database and typologically discussed. Results reveal the presence of two main types that cluster geographically in the region, as well as high internal variation with respect to the subtypes. Based on the classification, Suansu is assigned to the Exceed comparative type, the only representative of this type in the sample

Comparative constructions in Rawang

Dulong and Rawang are closely related Tibeto-Burman languages spoken just south and east of Tibet

Problems of methodology and explanation in word order universals research

Ever since the publication of Greenberg 1963, word order typologists have attempted to formulate and refine implicational universals of word order so as to characterize the restricted distribution of certain word order patterns, and in some cases have also attempted to develop general principles to explain the existence of those universals

Arguments against 'subject' and 'direct object' as viable concepts in Chinese

Thirty-one years ago Tsu-lin Mei (1961) argued against the traditional doctrine that saw the subject-predicate distinction in grammar as parallel to the particular- universal distinction in logic, as he said it was a reflex of an Indo-European bias, and could not be valid, as ‘Chinese ... does not admit a distinction into subject and predicate’ (p. 153). This has not stopped linguists working on Chinese from attempting to define ‘subject’ (and ‘object’) in Chinese. Though a number of linguists have lamented the difficulties in trying to define these concepts for Chinese (see below), most work done on Chinese still assumes that Chinese must have the same grammatical features as Indo-European, such as having a subject and a direct object, though no attempt is made to justify that view. This paper challenges that view and argues that there has been no grammaticalization of syntactic functions in Chinese. The correct assignment of semantic roles to the constituents of a discourse is done by the listener on the basis of the discourse structure and pragmatics (information flow, inference, relevance, and real world knowledge) (cf. Li & Thompson 1978, 1979; LaPolla 1990)

Similative, equative, and comparative constructions in Beja (North-Cushitic)

version avant révisionsInternational audienceThis paper deals with the various syntactic strategies used for the expression of similarity, equality and comparison in Beja in a comparative and typological perspective. It shows that the origin of the comparative marker is related to the universal quantifier, a rare strategy crosslinguistically. It discusses the extensions of various markers to other domains (in role phrases, functive phrases, simulative clauses, similes, accord clauses and pretense clauses), and shows that unlike other Cushitic languages, these are very limited and unfrequent. A final discussion concerns the use of a "phatic" strategy with the 2SG.M bound object pronoun), for the extended similative marker, an unrecorded strategy so far in other languages