SENĆOŦEN: A Grammar of the Saanich Language

20 Comparison

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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