Re: Comparison of sentences

on 10/16/06 3:57 PM, caeruleancentaur at caeruleancentaur@YAHOO.COM wrote:

>> In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Eugene Oh <un.doing@...> wrote:
>
>> Perhaps it would help if you made it explicit in your conlang what
>> is being compared -- in the sentence "I sat at my desk longer than
>> the day has hours", therefore, you might consider including the
>> explicating phrase "for a time" to make "I sat at my desk for a time
>> longer than the day has hours". Which might in turn be interpreted
>> as "a time longer than the hours of the day". Compare the Japanese
>> 一日の時é–"より長くデスクで座っていた
>> Ichinichi no jikan yori nagaku desuku de suwatte ita
>> one-day GEN hours than long.Adv desk LOC sit.Imperfective-past
>
>> Hope it helps.
>
> No, it doesn't help, but thanks for trying.
>
> Let me see if I can explain my problem more clearly.
>
> 1. I sat at my desk
> 2. longer than
> 3. the day has hours
>
> 1. I sat at my desk
> 2. for a time longer than
> 3. the day has hours
>
> Are these two independent clauses or is #3 a dependent clause?
>
> I am heavier
> than ("in comparison to" in Senjecas)
> he (him)
>
> In this structure "he (him)" is the object of the
> postposition "than."
Or perhaps it's short for "I am heavier than he is heavy", which is why some
would insist on "than he" rather than "than him". In the following pair of
sentences, the distinction is crucial:

I visit my uncle more than he (does).
I visit my uncle more than (I visit) him.

So you could think of sentences like these as equivalent to the type you're
having trouble with.

> In the previous example there is no noun or pronoun to be the
> object of "than."
>
> And that is my problem.  How do I express "comparative + than" when
> it links two clauses & not two substantives?  It seem to me that
> what is being compared is "I sat" & "day has."
>
> Or maybe what is being compared is the time expression "for a time"
> and the clause "day has hours."  There is still no substantive to be
> the object of the postposition.  How else can I express "than."
>
> Charlie
> http://wiki.frath.net
There are a number of ways to deal with this.

(1) Some languages don't have comparative structures like this at all, and
the whole thing would have to be paraphrased into two more or less
independent clauses, e.g., "The hours I sat at my desk were many. The hours
of the day are few."

(2) You could require the second clause to be reworked into a noun phrase,
as Eugene did in the Japanese example above. My conlang Kar Marinam would
have to nominalize the second sentence. Here's an example with a simpler
sentence (and a simplified gloss):

gÿr ekäp   dhÿ ebasgäple          gàsrum   ntÿheks
gÿr ekäp   dhÿ ebas-käp-(e)l(e)NM gàr-sum  n(à)-sÿheg-s
I   sat.NF he  be.NF-sit.Nom-Gv   more-All be.long
'I sat longer than he sat'

What you have here is a non-finite clause 'I sat...' followed by a finite
clause 'it was long, more than his sitting'. 'He sat' is nominalized in the
same way it would be in order to serve as a complement clause in other
contexts, such as 'I saw him sitting'. Also, 'sitting' is shown to be a
dependent of 'more' with the genitive case, as in your own example. 'More'
is related to the verb 'be long' through the allative case, which express
the degree to which a verb takes place, among other things.

The vocabulary in this sentence happens to require a verb ('be long'), but
comparisons would be made with adjectives or adverbs (both small and closed
classes in KM) in much the same way. The 'more than his sitting' phrase
would simply precede the relevant word, and the split into two clauses, one
non-finite and the other finite, would not be necessary.

(3) You could just allow a clause to follow 'than', like English does, or
perhaps in some altered form.

(4) Joseph Greenberg mentions in an article on universals that many African
languages use a verb 'to surpass' to express comparison. In my conlang
Eloshtan there is a postposition 'kanga' which means 'relative to', and is
used when the standard of comparison is a noun phrase, as in:

Zezem     jece      kangac.
be.fast-1 lightning relative-to.3
'I'm faster than lightning'

But when a whole clause is the standard, similarly to but opposite from the
Greenberg's languages, 'kanga' is used as a verb meaning 'be relatively
inferior to'. The original sentence would be expressed like this (borrowing
the word 'hour'):

llemt     tem kyenyenti glic vonamtov
sat-1-Pst my  desk      at-3 be.long-1-Pst-Conj

yomo aworok  tantrofov   kangafumov
day  hour-Pl have.4-Conj be.inferior.to-4-Conj

That's roughly, "I sat at my desk, I took a long time, the day has hours,
the day is inferior to me." It makes more sense in E. because every verb
after the initial one has the conjunctive affix -ev/-ov, showing that it's
only true insofar as it relates to the other clauses. FWIW, the four clauses
here could be ordered in any way, though affixes would move around so that
the first verb remains without the conjunctive and the others have it.

--
Josh Roth

http://fuscian.freespaces.com/

"Farewell, farewell to my beloved language,
Once English, now a vile orangutanguage."
-Ogden Nash