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SENĆOŦEN: A Grammar of the Saanich Language Main Menu Contents Preface Acknowledgments PART 1 Introduction The organization of this grammar The Place of SENĆOŦEN in the Salishan Language Family Basics of the SENĆOŦEN word Useful phrases PART 2 The SENĆOŦEN Alphabet and Sounds Consonants Vowels and Diphthongs Notes on Pronunciation PART 3 SENĆOŦEN Grammatical Patterns 1 Transitive and Intransitive Verbs 2 Past and Future Tense 3 Basic Speech Acts 4 Nouns and Articles 5 Possessive Pronouns 6 Adjectives 7 Basic Word Order 8 The Preposition 9 Serial Verbs 10 Auxiliaries 11 Conjunction: ‘And/with’ and ‘but/without’ 12 No and Not 13 Self and Each Other 14 More Negative Words 15 Questions: ‘Who?,’ ‘What?,’ ‘Someone,’ ‘Something’ 16 Questions: ‘Do what?,’ ‘Say what?,’ and ‘Which one?’ 17 Subordinate Subjects in Questions 18 Questions: ‘Whose?’ 19 Every, All, Any, and Some 21 Questions: ‘When?’ 22 Numbers 23 Time Expressions 24 Time Prefixes 25 Questions: ‘Where?’ 26 Location Expressions 27 Paths 28 Questions: ‘How?’ and ‘How much?’ 29 Adverbial Expressions 30 Conditional Clauses 31 Should, Must, Ought to, Want to 32 Object Pronouns 33 Passive 34 Strong, Weak, and Zero Stems 35 Participant Roles and Middle Voice 36 Recipient, Beneficiary, and Other Participants 37 Lexical Suffixes 38 Questions: ‘Why?’ 39 Because 40 Cause 41 Collective Plural 42 The Actual Aspect 43 State, Result, and Duration 44 Activity Suffixes 45 Reflexive, Inchoative, and Noncontrol Middle 46 Ȼ Clauses 47 Relative Clauses 48 Speech Act Modifiers 49 Possessed Verbs 50 Summary of Particles with Ȼ 51 So Then ... 52 Reporting Verbs and Direct Quotes 53 Indirect Quotes 54 Verbal Prefixes 55 Nominalizing Prefixes 56 Adverbial Prefixes 57 More Demonstrative Articles 58 Objects of Intent and Emotion 59 More Reduplication Patterns 60 Interjections 61 Politeness Expressions 62 Rare Prefixes and Suffixes 63 A Fully Annotated Text 64 Texts to Annotate Appendix A: Technical Description of SENĆOŦEN Sounds Appendix B: SENĆOŦEN Pronouns Appendix C: Demonstrative Articles Appendix D: SENĆOŦEN Kin Terms Appendix E: Index to Technical Linguistic Topics Appendix F: Vocabulary Bibliography SENĆOŦEN Dictionary Basic SENĆOŦEN Dictionary without root and affix indexes

20 Comparison

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Every language must allow for some way of comparing two things with respect to some quality. In comparing two things, the relationship between the things can be the same, as in ‘the cat is as big as the dog,’ or one item can be more than the other, as in ‘the cat is bigger than the dog.’ A grammatical construction that expresses that two things are the same or that equates two things is called equative. A construction that expresses the idea that one thing is more in some quality than another is called comparative.

In English, the equative construction uses this formula:
      X        is as QUALITY   as      Y
For example:           The cat is as      big            as   the dog.

The English comparative construction basically uses this formula:
    X       is       QUALITYer     than     Y
For example:        The cat   is         bigger             than   the dog.

In addition to equative and comparative constructions, languages have a way of comparing one thing to a whole group of things, as in ‘My dog is the biggest of the dogs.’ This kind of construction is called the superlative.

In English, the superlative uses this formula:
                                   X         is the QUALITYest    of       Y
For example:          My dog   is the     biggest            of   the dogs.

A fourth type of comparison is different type of expression. This is the correlative comparison. This pattern does not compare two things, but states a correlation between two qualities, as in ‘The more, the merrier’ or ‘The harder you work, the stronger you get.’ The English pattern for this connects two phrases preceded by ‘the’:
                              the QUALITY₁er,                the QUALITY₂er
                             The harder you work,           the   stronger you get.

In this section, we cover the formulas SENĆOŦEN uses in expressing equative, comparative, superlative, and correlative comparisons.

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PART 3 SENĆOŦEN Grammatical Patterns Montler, et al.
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