Abstract Current analyses ( Hu 2005 ; Gerner 2013 ; Liu et al. 2013 ) of Nuosu adjectival comparative constructions are not observationally adequate because they are only based on the semantic ...distinction between dimensional adjectives and other adjectives. A better analysis should make a further morphological consideration by dividing the Nuosu adjectives into root-sharing prefixed adjectives, non-root-sharing prefixed adjectives and simplex adjectives. Moreover, the existing analyses are not consistent. Some unacceptable comparative sentences in Hu (2005) are acceptable in Gerner (2013) and Liu et al. (2013) . I have found out that the inconsistency results from different rigorousness to adjectival morphosyntactic restrictions among different varieties or dialects of Nuosu. After a cross-dialectal investigation with three major dialects of Nuosu, i.e. Shynra, Yynuo and Suondi, it is concluded that Nuosu comparative constructions have a restricted form and a general form for superiority, inferiority and equality respectively. Different dialects or varieties have varying rigorousness to Nuosu adjectival morphosyntax, thus resulting in different choices of the forms for comparison. Accordingly, the available Nuosu varieties are classified into three types: varieties with more morphosyntactic rigorousness, transitional varieties and varieties with less morphosyntactic rigorousness. It is found that Shynra Nuosu is morphosyntactically less rigorous than Yynuo and Suondi Nuosu. I will also address the relationship between the two structural forms of comparative constructions. To conclude, a prediction is made on the development of Nuosu adjectival comparatives.
We present a set of experiments investigating how English- and Japanese-speaking children interpret Measure Phrase comparatives (e.g., X is 10 meters taller than Y / X-wa Y-yori 10-meters takai). We ...show that despite overt cues to the comparative interpretation (i.e., the comparative -er morpheme in English, and explicit linguistic and visual reference to a contextual standard), children representing both languages diverge from their adult counterparts in that they access a non-adult-like 'absolute measurement' interpretation (i.e., X is 10 meters tall). We propose to account for their response pattern by appealing to proposals by Svenonius and Kennedy (in Frascarelli, ed., Phases of interpretation, Mouton de Gruyter, 2006) and Sawada and Grano (Nat Lang Semant 19:191–226, 2011) that Meas in the head of the DegP, which houses the differential, selects for an absolute minimal value: zero. We argue that young children appeal to this absolute zero minimum in lieu of the correct derived standard, and must learn to override this value by appealing to the context to set the standard of comparison when interpretation requires them to do so.
When analysing Old Lithuanian texts from the 16th and the first half of the 17th century, one can notice that comparatives with the
suffix tend to appear in comparative constructions with connectives ...containing negation, e.g.
‘but I laboured more abundantly than they all’ (VEE 102: 16-17; 1 Corinthians 15: 10). This is the “particle comparative” in Stassen’s terms (1985; 2001). On the other hand, authors avoided comparatives with the
suffix in other types of comparative constructions (with the preposition
and the genitive). Philological and etymological analysis of
and
‘than’ shows that these connectives developed out of former sentence negations. This sheds some light on the syntactic environment in which the grammaticalization of the comparative suffix
occurred. The Lithuanian comparative suffix
(OLith.
, e.g.
‘better’) goes back to the postposed focus particle
, which functions as a marker of emphatic assertion of identity (König 1991). The primary contrastive function of the
suffix can be compared to Ancient Greek -τερος (Sanskrit
) in such usages as δεξίτερος ‘right(-hand)’. The grammaticalization of the focus marker
has occurred in sentences consisting of juxtaposed and contrasted clauses - the “conjoined comparative” in Stassen’s terms (1985: 38, 44), and in these sentences,
filled the role of pragmatic marker and focalizer, emphasizing one of two compared, oppositional items.
This paper presents a new analysis of Dutch comparatives and argues that they should be classified into phrasal and clausal comparatives (as e.g. Hankamer (1973) argues for English). Arguments for ...this classification come from differences in case marking and island effects. Merchant (2009) notes the same island effects in Greek comparatives, and by applying his analysis to Dutch we can explain the differences between the Dutch phrasal and clausal comparatives. Crucial in this analysis is the ellipsis of underlying structure, not only in the reduced clausal comparative, but also in the phrasal comparative, which reflects the similarity in their interpretation.
This explorative study reports how three types of comparative constructions in Mandarin Chinese, namely adjectival, adverbial and differential comparatives, are acquired by English learners in a ...college Chinese-language classroom. We start with a hypothesis that the syntactic structures of the adverbial comparative and the differential comparative will be a potential challenge to learners because these two constructions are neutralized in English comparatives. However, the results of the three in-class tests we conducted indicate that learners have more difficulty with the adjectival comparative and the adverbial comparative than the differential comparative. Based on these results, we discuss effects of L1 transfer, difficulties in acquiring structures that involve optional components, and differences between heritage and non-heritage learners in learning Chinese as a second language.
In this paper, advantages and disadvantages of using parallel texts in typological studies are considered according to the criteria of diversity, domains, analysis, per-spective, quality, ...representativity, and comparability. It is shown in a case study of multi-verb constructions (including serial verb constructions, converb constructions, etc.) in two motion event domains (BRING and RUN) how typology can profit from parallel texts especially in the investigation of quantitative variables. A method is introduced to transform features with continuous distributions into ternary features with low, intermediate, and high values which can then be tested for correlations.
廣義知網是以「個體–關係」為框架的知識表達模型，我們希望藉著這個表達模型，使詞彙與詞彙間的自動語意合成機制得以建立，從而幫助計算機由了解詞彙進一步發展到了解文意。為達成此目標，本文以比較詞與比較結構為例，討論比較詞的分類、定義以及比較句的合成等等問題。比較詞本身並沒有核心語意，而須在一個結構中才能顯現它的意義，因此我們參考框架網(FrameNet)所提出的比較事件框架，以其事件框架元素(frame element)作為定義比較詞的特徵。然後提出一個對應表，使比較句成分能一一對應到比較詞的語意特徵中，亦即使句子的表面結構轉換為一種深層的語意結構，達成計算機理解語言的目標, In this paper, we propose an approach for studying the semantic representations of comparison words and comparative constructions based on the framework of E-HowNet. Our objective is to determine how the semantic composition mechanism works. The proposed method establishes a mapping between grammatical structures and fine-grained event structures for comparative constructions. We encode the event structures of comparative constructions as part of the representations of comparison words. The fine-grained semantic roles are adopted from FrameNet. A semantic composition mechanism is then developed to unify word sense representations under syntactic constraints. Our ultimate goal is to achieve fully automatic semantic composition.
Amis is an Austronesian language spoken in Taiwan. This paper explores thesyntax of Amis comparative constructions from the following aspects: (i) What are the morphosyntactic characteristics of ...comparative constructions in Amis? (ii) How do entity-comparison and event-comparison in Amis differ from each other in terms of syntactic realization? (iii) How are Amis comparative constructions characterized from a typological perspective? Our findings suggest that (a) in Amis, four types ofcomparative constructions (i.e., juxtaposition type, nominal type, -ki- type, and ikaka/isafa type) can be identified, as they exhibit different morphosyntactic features;(b) with respect to encoding event-comparison, deverbalization of the action word is obligatory for all comparative constructions, except the juxtaposition type; (c) in terms of Klein’s (1991) typological characterization, Amis differs from English with regard to the syntactic patterning of comparatives. The typological distinction might be explicated by the parts-of-speech systems—based on the prototype and markedness theory, English is classified as having a full NAV inventory, whereas Amis belongs to an NAV language. Hopefully, this paper will contribute to both the understanding of Amis grammar and the typological theory of comparative constructions., 阿美語是台灣南島語的一支，本篇論文從以下面向探討阿美語比較句結構：(1)何為阿美語比較句結構的構詞及句法特徵? (2)阿美語的「物件比較」及「事件比較」在句法上如何區分? (3)如何從類型學的角度上描述阿美語比較句結構? 我們的研究發現：(a)根據不同的構詞句法特性，阿美語有四種比較句結構；(b)在「事件比較」上，除了並置型(juxtaposition type)以外，所有的比較結構中都需要將(表示事件的)動作詞進行去動詞化的機制；(c)根據Klein (1991)的類型學特徵，阿美語和英語在比較句的句法架構上有所不同，此類型學上的區分或許可以透過詞類系統得到解釋—在原型理論和標記理論的基礎之下，英語可被歸類成具備full NAVinventory 的語言，而阿美語則屬於NAV語言。我們期許本文能同時對於阿美語法的認識及比較句的類型學理論做出貢獻
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