|
Comparative Studies Of South Asia, Africa, And The Middle East
In general linguistics, the comparative is a syntactic construction that serves to express a comparison between two (or more) entities or groups of entities in quality or degree - see also comparison (grammar) for an overview of comparison, as well as positive and superlative degrees of comparison. The syntax of comparative constructions is poorly understood due to the complexity of the data. In particular, the comparative frequently occurs with independent mechanisms of syntax such as coordination (linguistics), coordination and forms of Ellipsis (linguistics), ellipsis (gapping, pseudogapping, null complement anaphora, Stripping (linguistics), stripping, verb phrase ellipsis). The interaction of the various mechanisms complicates the analysis. Absolute and null forms A number of fixed expressions use a comparative form where no comparison is being asserted, such as ''higher education'' or ''younger generation''. These comparatives can be called ''absolute''. Similarly, a null ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Comparison (grammar)
Comparison is a feature in the morphology or syntax of some languages whereby adjectives and adverbs are inflected to indicate the relative degree of the property they define exhibited by the word or phrase they modify or describe. In languages that have it, the comparative construction expresses quality, quantity, or degree relative to ''some'' other comparator(s). The superlative construction expresses the greatest quality, quantity, or degree—i.e. relative to ''all'' other comparators. The associated grammatical category is degree of comparison. The usual degrees of comparison are the ''positive'', which simply denotes a property (as with the English words ''big'' and ''fully''); the ''comparative'', which indicates ''greater'' degree (as ''bigger'' and ''more fully''); and the ''superlative'', which indicates ''greatest'' degree (as ''biggest'' and ''most fully''). Some languages have forms indicating a very large degree of a particular quality (called ''elative'' in Semit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |