Re: Comparison of sentences

On Mon, 16 Oct 2006 18:30:39 +0200, Lars Finsen <lars.finsen@...>
wrote:

>Den 16. okt. 2006 kl. 15.57 skrev caeruleancentaur:
>
>> 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'd say the latter.
>
>> I am heavier
>> than ("in comparison to" in Senjecas)
>> he (him)
>>
>> In this structure "he (him)" is the object of the
>> postposition "than."
>>
>> 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."
>
>You could perhaps analyse it to say "I sat at my desk for a time
>longer than the hours of the day." Then you have two nouns, clearly.
>
>The original English sentence is basically trying to compare an
>adverb (long-er) and relating it to a dependent clause. If your
>language can put a comparative marker on the adverb and a relative
>marker on the verb of the dependent clause, it should be able to
>handle it, I think.
I would say that the problem is that a time cannot be longer than the day
having hours.  The original English sentence is poorly-posed.

Do you want to translate something like:
"the time (during which I sat at my desk)"
"was longer than"
"the time (during which the day has hours)"?

If so, you must have sat at your desk from sometime during Egypt's Old
Kingdom.

Or do you want to translate something like:
"The number of hours (during which I sat at my desk)"
"was greater than"
"the number of hours (which a day has)"?
That would mean you sat at your desk for, say, 25 hours.  IMO that would be
physically impossible, but nowhere near as impossible as sitting there for
more than 6000 years.

>Isn't "than" usually viewed as a conjuction, BTW? Not sure, English
>grammar is not my strong point.
This has been discussed on-list before.  The gist was that some think it is
more of a conjunction than a preposition, and some think it is more of a
preposition than a conjunction; most think it is somewhere between a
conjunction and a preposition, while a few think it is almost entirely one
or the other.

And that seems to apply to professional linguists off-list as well as to
those of us on-list.

>LEF
>=========================================================================
-----
eldin

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