Unit 11. Comparison

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask’d, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
  And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
  As any she belied with false compare.

Quality

In this chapter we will discuss sentences comparing a quality, such as ‘Othello behaves like mad’. Here Othello is likened to someone mad, so ‘mad’ is in the qualitative case (abbreviated qual) corresponding to the case of Othello, which is the nominative. As already mentioned, the qualitative cases are marked by adding the secondary case suffix m to the case marker. The descriptors for qualitative cases are (and the insertion is explained in the following chapter) ‘the basis of comparison – located in the same hypothetical world as all others – for the sender (recipient, place, etc.)’. The object in the primary case, let’s call it the primary object for short, need not be overt; but if it is, we get a qualitative coordination.

The madman is the basis of comparison for the sender of behaving, not the basis of comparison for the sender of behaving (= Othello). What is compared is the behaviour (of Othello) with regard to its sender; Othello isn’t in any way like a madman, except for his behaviour.

And here is the translation promised at the end of the previous unit.

Compared and comparing sentences

A good concept for analysing a sentence with one or more qualitative objects is to think of it as comprising two different sentences: the compared sentence, which describes the world of the parole (i.e., it is grammatically real), and the comparing sentence, which describes the hypothetical world in which all the bases of comparison (the qualitative objects) are located. This is the comparing world. Take the Othello example:

The compared sentence is the part without the qualitative objects, but including the primary objects (both overt and missing per Rule Six). It is part of the original one – which therefore actually claims that Othello shows some behaviour per Rule Seven.

The comparing sentence is parallel to the compared one, but all the primary objects are replaced with the corresponding qualitative objects (both overt and missing) in the primary cases. It does not actually occur in the original one because all the cases have changed. The original sentence does not claim that a madman shows some behaviour; the behaviour of any madmen is not instantiated by its main predicate, it is only as if it happened. Trying to rephrase a sentence with an ‘as if’-clause is a good way to find out which part is translated as a qualitative object corresponding to which primary object: ‘Othello-nom shows behaviour as if he were a madman-qualnom’. (Of course, the existence of madmen who show some specific behaviour is pragmatically real.)

If the qualitative objects’ predicate (call it P) is not the main predicate, an inversion tells us that P’s predicate is not part of the comparing sentence unless P has an inner qualitative case. (See below.) Likewise, if P is a compound, the modifier isn’t part of the comparing sentence unless the epenthetic case is a qualitative, as can be seen by uncompounding.

The case descriptors ensure that the qualitative objects all refer to the same comparing world, as there is only one.

Objects in comparisons

What about primary objects that are not matched by their qualitative counterparts, such as the persuasive in the following example?

The qualitative persuasive is missing, so any information about the reason in the comparing world is absent. As the madmen are hypothetical, it does not really matter why they are showing some behaviour; but if Othello behaves like Roderigo, we might want an additional qualitative object to specify.

Circumventing identity of action; inner qualitative

Qualitative cases can also be used to circumvent Rule Four, i.e. for not implying identity. There are two different actions of drinking in each of the following examples, one not instantiated.

These examples imply that the two actions of drinking are in some way alike. This is a pretty weak statement, but if it is still undesirable, the drinking has to be explicitly instantiated twice: nágw veì mÌjdy. nágw viì jÌsky. drink-fact¹ PI_n−2-nom-dat^2a wine-acc-acc². drink-fact¹ PI_n−2-dat-dat^2a beer-acc-acc²..

Now we also have a use for the inner qualitative. Watch the following construction unfold.

Pronouns with inner qualitatives have to refer directly, not via the predicate: exchanging ‘tortoise’ and ‘this’ in the above sentences eliminates the tortoise from the comparing sentence, so we would arrive at ‘This is my tortoise. **Your this one is dead’. Also, objects of such pronouns need outer qualitative cases because they refer to the pronoun’s stem by Rule Three of sentence grammar, which is not part of the comparing world: in our example, ‘you’ needs a qualitative benefactive because the pronoun refers to the making of my tortoise.

Continuing the examples from the previous chapter, we can now circumvent the lie’s identity with an inner qualitative, expressing that Roderigo’s behaviour is motivated by a different lie than Othello’s.

Referring the comparison to an object

As we have seen, the comparison by definition refers to the qualitative object’s predicate. But what if we want to relate the comparison to an object, as in ‘I am drinking a wine like [the one] you [are drinking]’ as opposed to ‘I am drinking wine like you [are drinking wine]’? We start with a sentence that has the wine as its main predicate, and then rearrange to make ‘drink’ the main predicate, arriving at a phrasing that differs from the simple ‘I am drinking wine like you’ only by an additional pronoun.

Moving an object inside the comparing world can be dangerous: the first of the above sentences has the object ‘drunk by you’ in the qualitative accusative; therefore the comparison refers to the wine-making with regard to its content (the wine). In the second and third sentences ‘you’ is in the qualitative dative and so compares the drinking with regard to its recipient. However, the combined facts that the qualitative accusative object of ‘wine’ is still in place, and that there is only one comparing world, create a cross-link between ‘you’ and the comparison of the wine.

The object of ‘wine’ is of course omitted if the target of the comparison is clear from context.

‘despite’ and ‘against’

The prepositions ‘despite’ and ‘in spite of’ are translated with a qualitative case, often a causative or persuasive, meaning ‘like / as if for a reason X’. Lemizh does not say ‘despite the (actual) reason’ but ‘like without this reason / as if this reason didn’t exist’ or ‘as if there were the opposite reason’. Hence we need to negate the object – unless the lexicon already contains a word for that negation. ‘against’ in the sense of opposing something is translated likewise.

Adjectives, attributes and approximations

Adjectives of comparison and similar attributes are formed straightforwardly with qualitative brackets, as are approximations.

These brackets can be interpreted as absorptions of qualitative coordinations: mìl RycjÌ snÌwym. make-cons¹ colour-acc-acc² snow-acc-qualacc². ‘There is something coloured like snow’, mìl byÌ iìym oqelÌqe. make-cons¹ female-acc-acc² love-dat-qualacc² Othello-acc-nom³. ‘There is a woman like the one loved by Othello’.

A ‘chocolate/toy rabbit’ is chocolate or a toy like a rabbit (as opposed to a chocolate cake, which is a materials construction).

Comparison of partitive and qualitative cases

Partitive	Qualitative
là kregwèn màxkOl.	là kregwèm màxkOl.
do-fact1 mad-nom-partnom2 lie-fact-psu2.	do-fact1 mad-nom-qualnom2 lie-fact-psu2.
Some (or one) of the madmen show some behaviour because of a lie.	Someone behaves like mad because of a lie.

The darker shaded areas represent what the sentences claim per Rule Seven. The areas in the right-hand image touch to symbolise that they are alike but don’t overlap – it is only as if they did.

Quantity

Verbs of comparison

Three weighting numerals serve as verbs of comparison. The first is the most general one, ràw. ‘make some amount’, while the other two are sub-category words of it.

A simple application of these verbs is their adjectival use in cumulative or partitive brackets. Like other weighting numerals, ‘more’ and ‘most’ are often combined with abstract nouns with an inner consecutive, such as ‘beauty’, or factive, such as ‘wit’.

* ‘more’ with a qualitative object is about the only situation where the concept of compared and comparing sentences isn’t helpful, and we have to return to the basics, i.e. resort to the case descriptors: the wit is the basis of comparison for the content of making more, the beauty. A bit abstract, I know.

Positive

The difference between likening quality and quantity is purely semantic. The first, so to say, is multi-dimensional, while the latter is one-dimensional. Therefore, simple positive comparisons of adjectives or other words that can be weighted on a linear scale are constructed exactly like comparisons of quality.

However, adjectives are not always unambiguously one-dimensional: to distinguish ‘as beautiful as’ from ‘beautiful in the same way’, we use the compound priljrìlw. beautiful-cons-amount-cons¹. ‘some amount of beauty’. The same goes for ‘We rowed [as much, as hard] as we have never rowed before’ vs. ‘We rowed [in a way] like we have never rowed before’.

If the adjective to compare is not the main predicate, we can often use the construction for object comparison, typically with a factive bracket (i.e. an adverbially used adjective). The qualitative pronoun can and should be omitted if it is clear what is compared. Sentences with ‘as much as’ use the phrasing from the previous chapter, resulting in a third-level qualitative object.

Attributes are qualitative brackets.

Lastly, ‘not as fast as’ is translated with a comparative (‘less fast’, see below) since the negation of ‘as fast as’ means ‘not equal in speed; either faster or slower’.

Comparative

Let us now proceed to comparative sentences. The simplest of these are just basic comparisons such as the ones with tàcd. ‘more’ above. What we get are essentially predicate adjectives.

This is yet another example of Rule Two (an object is a subordinate word plus all of its own objects): the object of ‘more’ is not ‘fast’ but ‘This horse is as fast as the Neapolitan’s’ or, translating the consecutive as an abstract noun, ‘the speed of this horse as if it were the Neapolitan’s’, ‘the speed of this horse in comparison to the Neapolitan’s’ – so the sentence literally means ‘The speed of this horse in comparison to the Neapolitan’s is more’. In the last example, ‘others’ is omitted because it is clear from context: the horse cannot be faster than itself anyway.

Applying the construction from above, we see that the comparison verb ends up in an object. There is no ambiguity here as to what is compared, so we omit the qualitative pronoun.

Attributes are of course brackets.

‘the … the’, expressing a parallel between comparatives, translates as a positive comparison, often of abstract nouns.

Superlative

Again, we make use of the constructions described above, this time with the superlative verb àst. ‘most’. A qualitative coordination is not very helpful here; but a partitive one can define the basic set for the comparison.

The accusative object of àst. is ‘Bottom is a witty one from the set of weavers’, or as an abstract noun ‘the wit of Bottom from the set of weavers’; yielding ‘The wit of Bottom from the set of weavers is the most’.

With superlative attributes, note (again) the difference between partitive and cumulative brackets.

The Indo-European superlative can also express a high degree instead of a comparison (‘I have had a most rare vision’ = ‘I have had an extremely rare vision’). This usage is known as the elative (not to be confused with the elative case, which describes the starting point of an action) and is translated with the weighting numeral of weight 1, jnà..

Exercises

	Translate:
	Othello behaves like Roderigo does because of a lie. (The lie is Roderigo’s reason, not Othello’s.)
	Desdemona loves Othello despite his foreignness. (Use the verb mesortÌ. ‘native’.)
	The woman builds a bridge as quickly as the beaver a dam.
	The woman has got a horse faster than the Neapolitan’s.
	The more the horse eats, the slower it is.
	Thou hast got more hair on thy chin than my horse has on his tail.
	Why didn’t we translate the last exercise (as well as ‘more spirit’) with rywtìlcd —?
	In translating ‘Fantasy is as thin as air’, how would we include the information that fantasy and air are very thin?

Unit 12