The comparative case (
abbreviated
An abbreviation (from Latin ''brevis'', meaning ''short'') is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method. It may consist of a group of letters or words taken from the full version of the word or phrase; for example, the word ''abbrevia ...
) is a
grammatical case
A grammatical case is a category of nouns and noun modifiers ( determiners, adjectives, participles, and numerals), which corresponds to one or more potential grammatical functions for a nominal group in a wording. In various languages, nomin ...
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
In linguistics, an adjective (abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun.
Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the mai ...
or
adverbs An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, determiner, clause, preposition, or sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, level of certainty, etc., answering que ...
.
An example of a comparative case which designates similarity to something is found in
Mari, where the comparative case is the suffix () as in (1):
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 . For example, in (2) it appears on 'ice' in '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):
Nivkh is another language with this comparative case suffix (''-yk/-ak''), as in (4):
This latter sense of ''comparative case'' is similar to locational comparatives, where a locational case such as the
ablative
In grammar, the ablative case (pronounced ; sometimes abbreviated ) is a grammatical case for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives in the grammars of various languages; it is sometimes used to express motion away from something, among other uses. ...
marks the noun in a standard of comparison, found in Turkic languages like (5) from
Uzbek:
See also
*
Semblative case
*
Formal case
*
Equative case
Equative is a case prototypically expressing the standard of comparison of equal values ("as… as a …"). The equative case has been used in very few languages in history. It was used in the Sumerian language, where it also took on the semantic ...
References
Bibliography
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* Зорина, З. Г., Г. С. Крылова, and Э. С. Якимова. Марийский язык для всех, ч. 1. Йошкар-Ола: Марийское книжное издательство, 1990;
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Grammatical cases
Comparisons