Comparison in Kambaata: Superiority, Equality and Similarity Yvonne Treis
Comparison in Kambaata: Superiority, Equality and Similarity Yvonne Treis To cite this version: Yvonne Treis. Comparison in Kambaata: Superiority, Equality and Similarity. Linguistic Discovery, Dartmouth College Library, 2018, On the expression of comparison: Contributions to the typology of comparative constructions from lesser-known languages (guest editors: Yvonne Treis & Katarzyna I. Wojtylak), 16 (1), pp.64-99. hal-01350812v3 HAL Id: hal-01350812 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01350812v3 Submitted on 3 Feb 2019 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Comparison in Kambaata: Superiority, Equality and Similarity Yvonne Treis CNRS-LLACAN This paper is an in-depth study of the expression of comparison in Kambaata, a Highland East Cushitic language of Ethiopia. It discusses not only quantitative comparison, i.e. comparison of relative and absolute inequality and comparison of equality, but also analyses the morphology and syntax of expressions of qualitative comparison, i.e. comparison of similarity. Apart from predicative constructions, the analysis takes into account attributive comparative, superlative, equative and similative constructions. In the comparative construction (lit. ‘X is tall from Y’), the standard of comparison is marked by the ablative case, as in most languages spoken in the Horn of Africa.
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