Studies in Language. International Journal sponsored by the Foundation “Foundations of Language” - Volume 32, Issue 4, 2008

A typology of comparative constructions is presented, with major attention to the prototypical scheme in which two participants are compared in terms of the degree of some gradable property associated with them (as in John is more handsome than Felix). In a mono-clausal comparative construction, the Parameter (which is modified by the Index of comparison) may be copula complement, head of an intransitive predicate, or a verb within a serial verb construction. There are also bi-clausal comparative constructions, and — for languages with no comparative construction per se — comparative strategies. A non-prototypical scheme involves the comparison of two properties in relation to one participant (as in John is more loyal than intelligent). There is also brief discussion of directions of origin, diffusion and spread, and non-linguistic correlations.

The paper reports on a cross-linguistic survey of translational equivalents of the Standard Average European concept of wanting. It is conducted on a variety sample of 73 languages, each of which was checked for morphosyntactic and semantic properties of its regular means for expressing wanting, i.e. desideratives. Desideratives are shown to typically have other meanings in addition to ‘want’, an array of modal and mental-emotive senses. I suggest that the combination of these meanings with ‘want’ can insightfully be analyzed as a macrofunction, each language making its own decision about the set of situations in which its desideratives can be used. The often-claimed status of WANT as an alleged universal semantic prime is thus seriously called into question by the evidence from languages which always express wanting together with some other situations.

Each language has its own limited inventory of constructions from which speakers have to choose when they want to communicate their conceptualizations. This paper discusses a highly productive complex figure construction (Croft 2001:326) in the Papuan language Moi, which requires a number of different translations in English. In both SVO and SOV Papuan languages perceived events are normally expressed in coordinating complex figure constructions, but can appear in figure-ground constructions when pragmatically marked. To capture the genius of a language, interlinear and free translations in descriptive grammars should signal the language-specific links between form and meaning. The conclusion discusses to what extent and under what conditions cross-linguistic comparison of emic constructions is possible.

Information structure in the noun phrase remains unexplored or limited to the study of the s-form and the of-form in English, which are interpreted from the perspective of the Prague School. Accordingly, the prenominal s-form is chosen if the possessor expresses old information; conversely, if the possessor expresses new information, the postnominal of-form is preferred. Ancient Greek, however, indicates that this is not the sole pattern attested. In our data, drawn from Herodotus, a postposed genitive refers to the topic of the immediately preceding clauses, and has no semantically compatible referent around it. Preposed genitives denote new or discontinuous participants, and are used in contrastive and emphatic contexts. In this case, the principle “rheme before theme” can be identified.