Gradkonstruktionen

The database presents parallel sets of data on comparison constructions from 15 languages: Bulgarian, Guaraní (an Amerindian language spoken mostly in Paraguay), Hindi, Hungarian, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Mooré (a Gur language),Motu (from Papua New Guinea), Romanian, Russian, Samoan, Spanish, Thai, Turkish and Yorùbá (a Kwa language). The sentences have been elicited from naive informants with the help of language specific questionnaires. The goal has been an in-depth study of those languages, with the perspective of figuring out how their grammars differ in order to yield the diverse empirical picture that comparisons present across languages. Each language set contains at most 19 examples presented in the following order: 1) descriptive part that exemplifies the basic types of degree constructions in the given language (predicative phrasal, adverbial and attributive comparative, comparative of quantity, clausal comparative, equative, less-comparative, positive, superlative, too/enough-constructions) and gives an impression of the systematicity of degree constructions in the syntax and semantics of the language; 2) data that pertains to different aspects of cross-linguistic variation in the semantics of degree (differential comparative, comparison with a degree, ʻnegative island effectʼ test, tests for scope interactions of the comparative with the modals, degree question, measure phrase construction, subcomparative). Examples appear partly in the original script and are provided with the gloss, the translation, the grammaticality/felicity judgement and the context/reading where necessary. The judgement field contains felicity judgements for the scope interaction examples (supplied with the relevant contexts or readings) and grammaticality judgements for the rest. The following ranking has been used in both cases: ok(grammatical/felicitous); ?(slightly marked/slightly odd); ??(marked/odd); *(ungrammatical/infelicitous). "n/c" and "n/a" in the judgement field indicate that the example cannot be constructed or the test is not applicable. In the latter case, the comment field in the footer row contains a short explanation. "n/c" and "*" rows usually contain alternative examples (Alt) along with the literal ones (Lit). The former reflect alternative ways to express the relevant meaning, e.g. in the form of paraphrases.