Grew Pebbles

Comparative constructions

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In comparative constructions where each term is introduced with a grammatical pair like more… than, the relation between the two grammatical words is labeled comp:obj, with the first word being the head of the second. Consider the example:

Note that the first grammatical word of the comparison (plus) is considered a modifier of the property being compared. Examples in other languages: plus … que (French), più … di (Italian), bardziej … niż (Polish).

% French
pattern { 
	X1 [lemma="plus"|"moins"]; X2 [lemma="que"]; X1 << X2; 
	X1 -[comp:obj]-> X2
}

Sometimes, there is no grammatical word introducing the first term of the comparison; the property being compared has a particular inflection or it is represented with a specific word. In this case, the dependency comp:obj would be used to link the property directly to the than term, with no modifier relationship.

Superlative constructions

Superlative constructions containing a reference to the group of nouns compared are annotated with a udep relation connecting the comparative to the preposition.

% corpus= SUD_French-GSD@latest
pattern { X1 [lemma="meilleur"]; X2 [lemma="de"]; X1 < X2 }

Consecutive constructions

In consecutive constructions, such as so… that or in other languages: tellement … que (French), così … che (Italian), tak … że (Polish), the analysis would be similar:

% corpus = SUD_French-GSD@latest
pattern { 
	X1 [lemma="tellement"]; X2 [lemma="que"]; X1 << X2; 
	X1 -[comp:obj]-> X2
}

These constructions are similar to other constructions organized around pairs of correlated words.

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