Here, SAE signifies "Standard Average European". There is one position where, in quite a few SAE languages, oblique forms of (implicit) subjects tend to appear - at least in colloquial varieties.
This is derided by prescriptivists in several such languages, though. The situation is 'than X'. Consider the following examples:
- he is faster than I
- he is faster than me
- he is faster than I am
- I like her better than I like him
- I like her better than him
- I like her better than he does
- I like her better than him (in some colloquial varieties, this is possible)
Now, the transitive case gets ambiguous, but the intransitive situation is quite obvious. Since it seems SAE disprefers nominatives after prepositions, it wouldn't be very surprising if the oblique were used as often as possible. However, it could be possible that the transitive situation with comparison is felt to be too ambiguous, and the case marking would permit nominative after 'than'-like markers. So, the intransitive subject and the transitive subject of an implicit verb in a comparison would be marked in the object case, whereas the transitive subject in the same position would be marked with a nominative, thus begetting an ergative pattern!
However, there's another thing with regards to this type of comparison-structure that I have been thinking of: do 'than'-like comparisons have the same restrictions as the relativization accessibility hierarchy? Are there languages with than-comparatives that don't permit, say, recipients, locations and so on to be compared, but do permit subjects and objects?
No comments:
Post a Comment