Re: Word orders in comparative constructions

On Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 3:30 PM, Philip Newton <philip.newton@...> wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 19:09, Jim Henry <jimhenry1973@...> wrote:
>> 1. Does anyone know of any natlangs or conlangs with
>> a word order other than QMS or SMQ?
> I think Klingon doesn't really have a marker at all; comparatives work
> like this:
>
> "The idea of something being more or greater than something
> else (comparative) is expressed by means of a construction
> which can be represented by the following formula:
>
>  A Q {law'} B Q {puS}
>
> "In this formula, A and B are the two things being compared
> and Q is the quality which is being measured. The two
> Klingon words in the formula are {law'} <be many> and {puS} <be
> few.> Thus, it says <A's Q is many, B's Q is few> or <A has more Q
> than B has> or <A is Q-er than B.>"
Yes; Payne mentions this strategy.  I should
have mentioned that the QMS/SMQ ordering
only applies to languages with a M element
at all.  Toki Pona does much the same:

jan Lisa li suli mute.  jan Ken li suli lili.
Lisa is very tall.  Ken is not very tall.

> Lojban doesn't have a marker, either; comparatives and superlatives
> are (in my experience) typically realised as a relation including the
> morpheme -mau (<zmadu) "more", -me'a (<mleca) "less", or -rai (<traji)
> "superlative", with the comparee and the standard simply being
> arguments of that relation. Alternatively, using one of those three
> root words and adding the relation as a third argument.
I've read somewhere recently (not sure where, online
rather than in Payne or Hawkins -- maybe the WALS
articles?) that many natlangs express comparison
with a verb meaning "to surpass or exceed".
I wonder if the data that the SMQ/QMS ordering
generalizations are derived from includes those
languages, with the "surpass" verb considered
the marker?

Some other languages show comparisons with
a locative expression, e.g. X is tall beside Y,
or is tall from Y.  (Toki Pona has means to
do this as well; though I don't know if it's
been done before I think it would be clear
at a glance to any fluent speaker:
jan Lisa li suli poka jan Jen.)


> And with specific excess: {la djan. bramau la meris. lo centre be li
> pa re} / {la djan. zmadu la meris. lo ka ce'u barda ku lo centre be li
> pa re} "John is bigger than Mary by twelve centimetres" (lo centre be
> li pa re = something which is this many hundredth-metres in length:
> one two).
Interesting; so is "centimeter" the basic
length-measure term in Lojban and "meter"
is derived from it, or is there another root
word for "meter"...?  In gzb I mostly lexicalize
the same units of measure that are basic
in the metric system, but I have a root
for "kilogram" from which "gram" is derived,
and as expressions for volume are fairly
verbose, I"m thinking of adding a root
for either "liter" or "milliliter"; not sure
which would be most common.

--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/

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