Comparative case

The comparative case (abbreviated COMP) is a grammatical case which marks a nominal as "comparative" in some sense. The term comparative case can designate a case marker which performs the role of marking likeness of a noun to something else, and it can also refer to a discrete grammatical case which marks the noun serving as the standard of comparison in a comparative construction. It is distinct from the term comparative degree, in that comparative case is a morpheme appearing on nouns while comparative degree morphemes appear on adjectives or adverbs.

An example of a comparative case which designates similarity to something is found in Mari, where the comparative case is the suffix -la (-ла) as in (1):

(1) kol-la fish-COMP <колла>   kol-la fish-COMP 'like fish'

Mari also uses the comparative case in regards to languages, when denoting the language a person is speaking, writing, or hearing. Then, however, the accentuation varies slightly from the standard case. Usually, the suffix is not stressed. When it is used with languages, however, it is stressed.

An example of the comparative case marking the noun serving as the standard of comparison comes from the Chechen suffix -l. For example, in (2) it appears on sha 'ice' in shal shiila 'cold as ice':

(2) sha-l ice-COMP shiila cold sha-l shiila ice-COMP cold 'as cold as ice'

Similarly, in the Turkic language Sakha (Yakut), the noun serving as the standard of comparison can be marked with the comparative case suffix -TĀGAr as in (3):

(3) Bu DEM ït dog at-taaɣar horse-COMP türgennik quickly süür-er run-PRES <бу ыт аттааҕар түргэнник сүүрэр>   Bu ït at-taaɣar türgennik süür-er DEM dog horse-COMP quickly run-PRES 'This dog runs faster than a horse'

Nivkh is another language with this comparative case suffix (-yk/-ak), as in (4):

(4) Tlaņi reindeer ķanņ-ak dog-COMP eɣ-d be.fast-PRES Tlaņi ķanņ-ak eɣ-d reindeer dog-COMP be.fast-PRES 'A reindeer is faster than a dog'

This latter sense of comparative case is similar to locational comparatives, where a locational case such as the ablative marks the noun in a standard of comparison, found in Turkic languages like (5) from Uzbek:

(5) ɔt-am father-POSS.1SG u that ɔdam-dan man-ABL yɔš young ɔt-am u ɔdam-dan yɔš father-POSS.1SG that man-ABL young 'My father is younger than that man'

See also

• Semblative case
• Formal case
• Equative case

Bibliography

• Krueger, John R. (1962). Yakut Manual. Bloomington: Indiana U Press.
• Gruzdeva, Ekaterina (1998). Nivkh. München: Lincom Europa.
• Stassen, Leon (2013). "Comparative Constructions". In Dryer, Matthew; Haspelmath, Martin (eds.). The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Archived from the original on April 1, 2022. Retrieved April 3, 2022.
• Зорина, З. Г., Г. С. Крылова, and Э. С. Якимова. Марийский язык для всех, ч. 1. Йошкар-Ола: Марийское книжное издательство, 1990;