Similative and Equative Constructions in Japhug

Abstract

This paper documents equative, similative, comparative and superlative constructions on the basis of a corpus of narratives. It reveals a previously unsuspected wealth of constructions: no less than three main types of superlatives, and four types of equatives are attested, some including additional subtypes. 1 I would like to thank Graham Thurgood, Yvonne Treis, Brigitte Pakendorf and one anonymous reviewer for useful comments on this paper. Glosses follow the Leipzig glossing rules. Other abbreviations used here include: AUTO spontaneous-autobenefactive, CISLOC cislocative, FACT factual/assumptive, GENR generic, IFR inferential evidential, INV inverse, LINK linker, SENS sensory evidential, SFR sentence final particle, TRANSLOC translocative, TROP tropative. Chinese borrowings in Japhug are indicated in pinyin between chevrons. The examples are taken from a corpus that is progressively being made available on the Pangloss archive (Michailovsky et al. 2014, http://lacito.vjf.cnrs.fr/ pangloss/corpus/list_rsc.php?lg=Japhug). This research was funded by the HimalCo project (ANR-12-CORP-0006) and is related to the research strand LR-4.11 ''Automatic Paradigm Generation and Language Description'' of the Labex EFL (funded by the ANR/CGI). 2 Previous work on this language includes a grammar (Jacques 2008), a dictionary (Jacques 2015), and a series of articles on specific grammatical topics (see for instance Jacques 2013b, 2014, 2016c).