Comparative, similative and simulative expressions in Ese Ejja

Abstract

This paper examines the expression of comparison in the Amazonian language Ese Ejja (Takanan) and explores both quantitative (relative (in)equality and superlativity) and qualitative comparison (similarity and simulation). This broad perspective reveals a clear asymmetry: while qualitative comparison is expressed via morphemes well incorporated into the grammar of the language, i.e. dedicated suffixes and enclitics, and is well represented in the corpus, quantitative comparison is most often expressed by strategies (rather than dedicated morphology) like clause juxtaposition and is scarce in my corpus of spontaneous language. The quasi-absence of dedicated morphology for the expression of quantitative comparison is all the more remarkable when taking into account that the language displays a large class of adjectives with a rich paradigm of adjectival affixes, which, for instance, negate, attenuate or question the adjectival root. This paper describes the expression of comparison in the Amazonian language Ese Ejja (Takanan). Following Fuchs (2014), I distinguish quantitative from qualitative comparison. Quantitative comparison is understood as the comparison of two entities with regard to gradable properties, while qualitative comparison expresses a more general manner (dis)similarity between two entities. The constructions and strategies examined here express thus not only comparison of (in)equality, but also other kinds of comparison like similarity ('be like') or simulation ('do as if'). The perspective chosen resulted from two observations: while qualitative comparison is well attested in my natural corpus, quantitative comparison is infrequent and mostly illustrated with non-spontaneous data. Furthermore, a narrower perspective would have been reductive: Ese Ejja has one dedicated but rare morpheme for comparison of equality and no dedicated morphology for encoding inequality and superlativity. On the other hand, similative and simulative comparison are expressed with dedicated grammatical morphemes or constructions. The paper is organized as follows: Section 1 offers relevant background on the language and its speakers. Section 2 is dedicated to the adjective morphology: Ese Ejja noticeably privileges predicative adjectives (a large class of bound roots associated to a variety of suffixes) over attributive ones (a small class with low functional load). Section 3 describes the expression of quantitative comparison. It first illustrates the diversity in conjoined comparative strategies, and then discusses the superlative strategy and the dedicated but rare equative degree morpheme. Section 4 focuses on the more frequent expression of qualitative comparison, encoded by two constructions for the expression of similarity and one for simulation. Section 5 summarizes the various pieces of evidence demonstrating the clear preference in this Amazonian language to express comparison qualitatively rather than quantitatively.