Comparative Constructions
A prototypical comparative construction involves a quality or property whose extent is compared, the entity being compared, and the standard of comparison. Thus in [en] Stephan is taller than Joakim, Stephan is the entity compared, Joakim represents the standard of comparison to which Stephan is compared, and the adjective taller denotes the quality that is compared, i.e., tallness.
Adverbs can be compared as well, e.g. in [cs] Michal mluví lépe než Miloš “Michal speaks better than Miloš”, the word lépe is an adverb and it denotes the quality of Michal’s speaking rather than of his personality in general.
Finally, we can also compare quantities, as in Melanie has more money than Sue, or in There is more than one way of doing it; in the latter example, the standard of comparison is conflated with the entity counted. Similarly, there are sentences where both the standard of comparison and the new value are hidden in the verb: The prices of homes have more than doubled.
The syntax of comparative constructions poses various challenges for linguistic theory. For English, many of these are discussed in Bresnan (1973) and Huddleston and Pullum (2002, chapter 13). A cross-linguistic survey of equality comparison is provided in Haspelmath (2017).
There are no UD relations designed specifically to mark comparative constructions. This page documents what regular UD means are used to analyze these constructions and how they are applied.
Equality, Direction and Degree
- Equality comparison [en]: The car is as big as mine.
- Equality comparison [cs]: To auto je stejně velké jako moje. “The car is as big as mine.” Alternatives: To auto je tak velké jako moje. To auto je velké jako moje.
- Similarity comparison [cs]: To auto je podobně velké jako moje. “The car is similarly big to mine.”
- Inequality non-scalar comparison [cs]: To auto je jinak velké než moje. “The car’s size is different from mine.” (lit. “The car is differently big than mine.”)
- Scalar decreasing comparison (inferiority) [cs]: Loňský model byl méně propracovaný než letošní. “The last year’s model was less elaborated than this year’s.”
- Scalar increasing comparison (superiority) [cs]: Letošní model je propracovanější než loňský. “This year’s model is more elaborated than last year’s.”
- Superlative [en]: This is the biggest car of all.
- Superlative [cs]: Tohle je největší auto ze všech. “This is the biggest car of all.”
- Decreasing superlative [cs]: Letošní model je nejméně propracovaný za posledních pět let. “This year’s model is the least elaborated of the previous five years.”
Coding Strategies across Languages
Morphological Gradation of Adjectives and Adverbs
Adjectives in some languages have an inflectional category that expresses
degree of comparison. Special forms are used when the adjective appears in
an inequality scalar comparison: A form called comparative is used when
the modified noun has a greater degree of the quality denoted by the adjective
than the standard of comparison. A form called superlative is used when
the modified noun has a greater degree of the quality denoted by the adjective
than all entities in a certain set. In UD, morphological comparatives and
superlatives are tagged using the Degree feature: Degree=Cmp and Degree=Sup,
respectively. If a language has morphological comparative and/or superlative,
then the base forms of ajdectives should be tagged as the positive degree
(Degree=Pos). Note that the positive degree should not be confused with the
positive Polarity. Even negative adjectives can be compared, therefore they
can also have the positive (basic) degree.
Czech:
Similarly, the degree morphology also applies to Czech adverbs:
There are also languages with morphologically expressed equative degree, used in equality comparisons. One such language is Hiligaynon [hil] (Philippinic; Wolfenden 1971:103) Haspelmath (2017):
“Pedro is handsome.”
“Pedro is as handsome as Juan.”
Periphrastic Gradation
Other languages, like English, have a mixed system. Some English adjectives have morphological degrees like in Czech, e.g., smart – smarter – smartest. Other adjectives must be compared periphrastically with the help of the words more, most, less and least. These function words provide the degree feature and they can be viewed themselves as (irregular) degree forms of two basic adverbs: much – more – most; little – less – least.
The comparative and superlative represent increasing degrees of the quality compared. Decreasing degrees can also be expressed, e.g., instead of saying that Martin is more intelligent than Donald, we could say that Donald is less intelligent than Martin. The coding of decreasing degrees is periphrastic even in Czech:
Other languages, e.g. Spanish, lack the morphological degree almost entirely; except for a few irregular forms, such as mejor “better” and mayor “bigger”, all adjectives are compared periphrastically:
Unmarked Degree
Finally, there are languages where the compared adjective is neither marked morphologically, nor modified by a degree adverb. The base form of the adjective is used and the fact that it is being compared must be derived from the coding of the other participants, e.g., the standard of comparison.
Chinese [zh]: “Zhangsan is fatter than him.”
Japanese [ja]: “English is easier than Japanese.”
Coding of the Standard of Comparison
The standard of comparison can be a nominal or a clause. If it is a clause, it may be marked by a subordinating conjunction: either one whose primary function is comparison (English than, Czech než) or a more general one (Spanish que). It is not uncommon that different conjunctions are used in inequality comparisons (than, než, que) and in equality comparisons (as, jako, como).
If the same conjunction is used with bare nominals, we still tag it SCONJ (but we use dependency relations that are reserved for nominals, see below). However, if a language has a function word that is primarily used with nominal standards of comparison, it will be tagged ADP.
Nominal standards of comparison can also be marked morphologically by a comparative Case, as in Nepali [ne]:
“This flower is beautiful.”
“This flower is more beautiful than that flower.”
“This is the most beautiful flower of all.”
A few languages also have an equative case that marks the standard in equality comparisons. One example is East Greenlandic [kl] (Eskimo; Mennecier 1995:460) Haspelmath (2017):
“He is as tall as me.”
In other languages, the standard of comparison may be marked morphologically by a case that is not dedicated specifically to comparison, such as the genitive in Russian [ru]:
“My father is older than yours.”
Other Coding Strategies
Some languages need a verb to compare degrees of properties, e.g., instead of saying John is taller than Tom, they say John surpasses Tom in height, and instead of John is as tall as Dan, they say John reaches Dan’s height. Such constructions do not differ significantly from normal clauses and we do not discuss them further on this page.
A rather unique equative construction exists in Persian [fa] (Mace 2003:52) Haspelmath (2017):
“This is as fast as that.” (Lit. “This is to the speed of that.”)
Relations in Equality Comparison
In constructions of the form as X as Y or the same X as Y, X and Y can be of a range of syntactic types, leading to surface forms such as those exemplified below:
- Commitment is as important as a player’s talent.
- Get the cash to him as soon as possible.
- I put in as much flour as the recipe called for.
We note that the head of the whole construction appears to be the head of the X phrase, i.e., the property whose degree is compared. We can simply say:
- Commitment is important.
- Get the cash to him soon.
- I put in flour.
We then say that the first as is an independent modifier in the comparative, modifying something in the X phrase, in part because the following as Y is fairly optional:
- Commitment is (just) as important.
- ?Get the cash to him (just) as soon.
- I put in (just) as much flour.
However, this first as may not modify the head of X, it may modify an existing modifier of the head of X. Its role is adverbial (advmod), consistent with other kinds of degree modification:
We then take the complement of the comparative (that is, the standard of comparison) as an oblique dependent of the first part. It is clear that the material in the complement as Y can be clausal. It is also usually optional, as indicated above. For that reason, we usually make the complement an advcl, with the second as analyzed as mark. That gives us:
We take the as Y clause as a dependent of the content word whose degree is being assessed (here often). We take its head to be the head of the clause, here heard. An initially plausible alternative analysis would be to make the clausal dependent headed by as as a dependent of the comparative modifier as, more, or less, and indeed this is the analysis which Huddleston and Pullum (2002) argue for in English. However, there are several reasons to doubt this analysis. One is the general principles of UD in favoring content words as heads. A second argument is motivated by a desire for crosslinguistic adequacy: in languages such as Finnish and Japanese, this functional element is not present.
Since the first as is a functional element, the dependent can be understood to modify the whole phrase as often, and therefore is attached to the head of that phrase. Additionally, it might be noted that comparatives without a comparative word occur in certain varieties of English. For example in Indian English you find usages such as So don’t worry if you think that you have a girlfriend, who is intelligent than you. One further argument is that morphological comparatives will receive an analysis parallel to the periphrastic ones.
Inequality Scalar Comparison
More often than not, inequality scalar comparative structures are similar to equative structures in the same language. In English periphrastic comparatives, more and less are parallel to the first use of as in equality comparison, except that more can also directly modify a noun (comparing quantity). In such cases the relation of more to the noun is amod, and the standard of comparison depends directly on more, roughly seeing it as elliptical for more numerous. In general, the standard of comparison always depends on an adjective or adverb, and is usually an advcl or obl.
In addition to crosslinguistic adequacy, we can see here another possible advantage of not attaching the than clause to more: This analysis then means that the dependency structure is more parallel between cases with a periphrastic comparative like more intelligent and a morphological comparative like smarter.
Finnish [fi]:
“smarter than you thought”
An optional oblique argument may quantify the difference between the comparee and the standard of comparison:
Czech [cs]:
“Pavel is taller than Klára by ten centimeters.”
Note that the quantification is not necessarily definite and numerical; for example, one could say that John is significantly more intelligent than Martin. Like with the standard of comparison, one has to decide where the quantifying phrase is attached in periphrastic comparatives. Again, it might be appealing to attach it to the degree adverb; elsewhere adverbs do modify other adverbs, as in The prices are dropping very rapidly. Nevertheless, if the degree adverb modifies an adjective, we attach the quantifying adverb or phrase directly to that adjective, for the same reasons as those we listed for the standard of comparison: structures will be parallel between periphrastic and morphological comparative, which includes parallelism across languages. Moreover, it would be counterintuitive to attach one modifier of the comparative (the standard of comparison) to the adjective and the other modifier (the quantifying phrase) to the degree adverb.
Interestingly enough, some quantified inequality comparisons use function words that are otherwise used with equality comparisons, as in this English example:
Ellipsis in Comparative Constructions
Very commonly the complement clause in a comparative undergoes various amounts of partial reduction or ellipsis, sometimes to a quite extreme extent. If the head is elided, then the functional element can be promoted:
“Wheat raises blood sugar even more than how much sugar raises it.”
In general, we treat whatever remnant that remains as still an advcl:
“I put in as much flour as for how much flour the recipe called.”
“He plays better when he is drunk than how he plays when he is sober.”
“Your hair is more pink than how pink it ever was.”
In the following Russian [ru] example, the standard of comparison is missing completely and the partially reduced adverbial clause quantifies the difference:
“the bigger surface, the bigger friction”
However, a limiting case of this is that only a nominal is present:
- as important as a player’s talent
- more important than a player’s talent
The analysis in this case is unclear: Should the comparative complement still be analyzed as an extremely reduced complement clause or analyzed simply as a nominal modifier? There are arguments for both positions. For English, there is a long discussion of the arguments in section 2.2 of chapter 13 of Huddleston and Pullum (2002). We err on the side of minimizing the postulation of unobserved structure and opt to treat these cases as just an oblique nominal complement. In consequence, the subordinating conjunction is attached as case rather than mark:
This analysis is also used when the nominal itself is reduced, i.e., the head noun is elided and a modifying adjective, determiner or numeral is promoted. A Czech example:
“I like red wine more than white.”
“depends more on the state of the line than on the speed of the device”
In some languages, ellipsis in comparative clauses may involve patterns similar to gapping in coordination. The literal translation of the following Swedish [sv] example would be Dan plays badminton better than Joakim tennis. Such comparative gapping is analyzed using the orphan relation, much like the more widespread coordinate gapping:
“Dan plays badminton better than Joakim does tennis.”
“Nathan gives more to you than (how much) Fran (gives) to me.”
“More than” as a Multi-Word Expression
In certain contexts the comparative complement combines both the action or adjective that is being compared and the standard of comparison:
- more than 90 percent (= over 90 percent)
- more than likely
- Home prices have more than doubled in the past decade.
In these cases we consider more than to be a fixed multi-word expression because the two words are inseparable. One cannot say *more percent than 90.
If the expression modifies a counted noun phrase, it attaches directly to the modified number:
If there is no number (because the indefinite article functions as the number “one”), it attaches directly to the head noun:
More Examples
French [fr] inequality: “Mathilde is kinder than you think.”
French [fr] equality: “Patrick is as brave as Pierre.”
Greek [el] morphological comparative: “Water is considered more important than oil.”
Greek [el] periphrastic comparative: “Water is considered more important than oil.”
Greek [el] clausal standard of comparison: “He contributes more than he receives.”
Russian [ru]: “Misha is smarter than his brother.”
Russian [ru]: “Misha is smarter than his brother.”
Russian [ru]: “Misha is the smartest of them all.”
Russian [ru]: “Misha is as smart as his brother.”
Finnish [fi]: “The kitchen is smaller than the living room.”
Finnish [fi] non-projective: “Matti has a bigger car than Pekka.” The example also shows that comparative structures are often elliptical in some way. The sentence does not compare Matti and Pekka but rather their cars, and the car owned by Pekka is not explicitly present in the sentence.
In Finnish, it is also possible to make comparisons without the comparative conjunction kuin: “The living room is bigger than the kitchen.”
An equality comparison in Finnish [fi]: “I am reading the same book as Pekka.”
Finnish [fi] superlative: “Finland’s best cook”
A phrase headed by a superlative adjective can act as a noun phrase, e.g., the subject of the sentence: “The most beautiful of flowers was on the windowsill.”
Egyptian [egy]: “the one who is older than me”
References
- Joan W. Bresnan. Syntax of the comparative clause construction in English. Linguistic Inquiry, IV(3):275–343, 1973.
- Martin Haspelmath. Equative constructions in world-wide perspective. In Yvonne Treis and Martine Vanhove, editors, Similative and Equative Constructions. A cross-linguistic perspective, volume 117 of Typological Studies in Language, pages 9–32. John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam / Philadelphia, 2017. ISBN 978-90-272-0698-5. doi: 10.1075/tsl.117.02has.
- Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2002.