A clausal analysis of Dari and Tajik phrasal comparatives

LINGUIST List, 2019

2018

This thesis examines the crosslinguistic variation and acquisition of comparative constructions and proposes a fine-grained AP periphery along with an analysis of comparatives as constructions involving subtraction. More specifically, it is proposed that gradable predicates incorporate a Quantifier head and that comparative morphology is realised in two distinct heads above the Q-head: the higher C-head assigns case to the differential argument whereas the lower one, which is immediately above the Q-head checks the case of the standard phrase. Furthermore, I provide novel evidence for two types of comparative markers, a 'functional' one, which is the realisation of C2 if the gradable predicate does not move to C2, and a 'lexical' one, which is the comparative form of the quantity word that adjoins to a positive adjective. This analysis explains morphological facts as well as variation in case assignment in Greek varieties. As far as standard phrases are concerned I p...

Progressively Developing Action and Ways of Expressing It in the Modern Dari Language Vitalii Belokon & Dr. Vladimir Mikolaichik Department of Middle Eastern Languages, Faculty of Foreign Languages, Military University of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, Russia Abstract This study conducts a comparative analysis of Aktionsart—the lexical and grammatical encoding of temporal action dynamics—in Russian and Dari, two typologically distinct languages. Russian, a synthetic Slavic language, employs a rich system of derivational morphology (e.g., prefixes за- [inchoative] and про- [durative]) to compress nuanced temporal boundaries into single verbs. In contrast, Dari, an analytic Indo-Iranian language, relies on periphrastic strategies, auxiliary verbs (e.g., raftan [“to go”] grammaticalized as a progressive marker), and adverbial modifiers to convey similar aspectual meanings. Through qualitative corpus analysis and comparative tables, the paper demonstrates how both languages achieve functional equivalence in expressing Aktionsart despite structural asymmetry. Key findings reveal that Dari’s syntactic flexibility and lexical repetition (e.g., [بار کرده میرود]{dir="rtl"} [“keeps loading”]) challenge Eurocentric biases privileging morphological complexity, while Russian’s affixational precision (e.g., переделать [“to redo”] vs. хаживать [“to go habitually”]) exemplifies synthetic granularity. The grammaticalization of raftan in Dari, evolving from a motion verb to an aspectual operator, underscores the role of typological diversity in shaping cognitive and cultural conceptualizations of action. By interrogating Vendler’s (1957) taxonomy through a pluralistic lens, this research advocates for typologically inclusive frameworks in aspectology, emphasizing that linguistic diversity reflects not structural hierarchy but divergent epistemologies of temporality. The study contributes to linguistic typology, pedagogy, and computational linguistics, while urging broader recognition of analytic systems’ expressive richness. Keywords: Aktionsart, Comparative Linguistics, Russian Language, Dari Language, Grammaticalization, Typological Asymmetry, Verbal Semantics The Tenth International Conference on Languages, Linguistics, Translation and Literature 1-2 February 2025 , Ahwaz For more information, please visit the conference website: WWW.TLLL.IR

Lissim Working Papers, 2013

This paper focuses on comparatives in Hindi-Urdu with special emphasis on zyaadaa. In addition to presenting the basic means of comparison in Hindi-Urdu, we investigate the issue of implicit versus explicit comparison in the language in detail, and use Kennedy"s (2009) tests to show that Hindi-Urdu displays explicit comparison with a covert-er. Further, we provide new data showing the interaction of zyaadaa with POS,-er and bahut, which suggest a re-examination of conclusions previously made regarding the nature of zyaadaa in Bhatt (2012). Contra Bhatt (2012) who claims that attributive zyaadaa in adjectival constructions and (optional) zyaadaa in phrasal comparatives has a weak semantics; we argue that zyaadaa has a non-redundant semantics. It makes available an "excessive" reading in adjectival constructions and a "norm-related" or "big differential" reading in phrasal comparatives, by introducing a variable which must be bound by a degree operator. We argue that the availability of these additional readings correlates with whether POS binds the degree variable of the adjective or that of zyaadaa.

Final version available in: K. M. Jaszczolt & K. Turner (eds). Meaning Through Language Contrast Vol. 2, Amsterdam: J. Benjamins, pp. 441-462, 2003

This paper focuses on a very specific aspect of a construction in Hindi-Urdu involving the verb ho 'be'. The construction was previously described as displaying a pattern of differential case marking (DCM) in the literature, expressing specific semantic effects. These effects were previously compared to the contrast known as the stage-/individual-level contrast. The paper will show, however, that this view does not take into account various syntactic and semantic facts about this construction, and argues for a more differentiated view: what has been regarded as a single construction to be differentiated only by the case marking, should rather be treated as two separate constructions with differences in the nominal argument structure, case marking and semantics. † Thanks to the audience of the LFG12 conference for comments and suggestions, as well as to my informants: Qaiser Abbas, Tafseer Ahmed, Rajesh Bhatt, Miriam Butt, Ghulam Raza. Special thanks to Rajesh Bhatt and Miriam Butt for many comments on earlier versions of this paper. 1 The abbreviations in the glosses are as follows: 1/2/3 -1st/2nd/3rd person, Acc -accusative,

Grammar is a dynamic system of emergent categories and flexible constraints that are always changing under the influence of domain-general cognitive processes involved in language use. On this view, the present project aims to provide a cognitive- typological account of the architecture of “Comparison” in Persian which belongs to the Iranian sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. This project initially follows the cognitive framework of Heine (1997), in which the genesis of “comparative constructions” as a language structure is cognitively the product of our interaction with the world around us and is immediately derived from the way we experience our environment and use that experience in species-specific communications. Furthermore, this construction as a universal domain can be accounted for by schematic structures called “event schemas”. These schemas represent more concrete domains and –crucially- they serve as sources for more abstract domains of “comparison”. As the second feature of the research, namely typology, I come behind C. Lehman`s idea of word order typology and his principle of placement for modifiers (1974) which is based directly on Greenberg's universals and also W.P Lehman`s (1972) and (1976) OV/VO typological theory. My objective in this contribution is fourfold. First, with respect to extant Old and Middle Persian texts, I try to portray the emergence of comparative construction in Persian, a historically well-documented language, through concrete sources and schemas represented in Heine (1997). As the second and third goals of this project, I intend to illustrate if there are any– and if so to elucidate- a) unrepresented schemas and subschemas in Persian which have not been recognized by Heine (1997) as the lexical sources for comparative constructions and b) further diachronic development of “comparative constructions” in Persian in the light of grammaticalization theory and the cognitive phenomenon of metaphorical extension explicated in Heine et al. (1991). The last goal of the project with regard to typology, concerns word order within the comparative construction in Persian, since based on Andersen (1983:102) the comparative construction has been regarded so central to word order typology in that the typological patterning of an individual language can be determined alone by the order of elements within this construction. Preliminary observations depict the contribution of the present proposal to our knowledge in a number of ways. It will lead us to : a) the first manifestations of comparative constructions in the history of Persian, b) propose the grammaticalization schemas and clines for the development of different construction encoding comparison in line with Heine (1997) and bring forward some unperceived source schema and subschema in Persian namely “Body -Part Schema” and “Definite Schema” and also recognize as underlying conceptual patterns for comparison event schemas in Persian that -so far- have remained unidentified in the specialized literature on the individual languages e.g. the “Double-Predicate comparative construction” or “Idiomatic comparative construction”, b) grammaticalization (auxiliation) path involving comparative construction as the source for mood category across languages in the form of “Evaluative Schema” (Heine 1993:37), and c) present the word order pattern and the security of order of elements within the comparative constructions regarding extant historical data, for following Lehman (1973:56) the word order within the comparative construction is never changed for poetic effect. Key Words: Comparative Construction, grammaticalization, event schema, Persian.

Semantics and Pragmatics, 2015

Excessives (e.g., this pair of pants is too long) are often considered as a 'degree construction' in the literature, presumably because it is assumed that their semantics involves a comparison of degrees. This paper takes a cross-linguistic look at the excessive construction in Japanese and raises the question of whether degrees are a necessary ingredient in the semantics of comparison. Unlike any degree morpheme in English,-sugi 'to exceed' can combine with either a gradable adjective (e.g., naga 'long') or a non-gradable verb (e.g., yomi 'to read') to form an excessive construction. In each case, a semantically different type of phrase can be used as a differential: when-sugi combines with an adjective, a measure phrase can be used as a differential; when-sugi combines with a verb, a floating numeral quantifier can be used as a differential. Based on this observation, I put forward a non-degree based analysis in which-sugi is not a degree quantifier. Specifically, I argue that a V-sugi sentence describes a comparison of two sets of objects or events, whereas an Adj-sugi sentence describes a comparison of two sets of degrees. This analysis draws an interesting parallel to the A-not-A analysis of the comparative in the literature, and implies that the semantics of a 'degree construction' does not necessarily involve a comparison of degrees.

Published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Licence (CC BY 4.0): http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ISBN: 978-3-96110-083-5 (Digital) 978-3-96110-084-2 (Hardcover)

Vuillermet, Marine, 2018

This paper examines the expression of comparison in the Amazonian language Ese Ejja (Takanan) and explores both quantitative (relative (in)equality and superlativity) and qualitative comparison (similarity and simulation). This broad perspective reveals a clear asymmetry: while qualitative comparison is expressed via morphemes well incorporated into the grammar of the language, i.e. dedicated suffixes and enclitics, and is well represented in the corpus, quantitative comparison is most often expressed by strategies (rather than dedicated morphology) like clause juxtaposition and is scarce in my corpus of spontaneous language. The quasi-absence of dedicated morphology for the expression of quantitative comparison is all the more remarkable when taking into account that the language displays a large class of adjectives with a rich paradigm of adjectival affixes, which, for instance, negate, attenuate or question the adjectival root.