Expanding our Typology of Conjoined Comparatives
(joint work with Margit Bowler (University of Manchester) & Octavio León Vázquez (CIESAS))

Zoom link: https://ucla.zoom.us/j/95703088970?pwd=TENsT2EraFZTQXFvMG9xRTBtaXpQZz09

Meeting ID: 957 0308 8970

Passcode: 372159

Please note: non-UCLA attendees should RSVP to linguist@humnet.ucla.edu in order to be admitted to the talk. 

Abstract

Conjoined comparatives have traditionally been described as involving two conjoined clauses, one containing the target comparison and the other containing the standard comparison (Stassen 1985); generally, the expected form of the predicates is the positive form (Kennedy 1999, 2011). Traditionally, Mixtec comparatives have been presented as an example of conjoined comparatives (Stassen 1985), although they do no match the expected syntactic structure of conjoined comparatives. During this talk, we provide evidence from San Sebastián del Monte Mixtec (ISO: oks) in support of the idea that Mixtec comparatives are indeed syntactically conjoined; however we can do so only by expanding the syntactic typology of conjoined comparatives. More importantly, we account for the unexpected presence of degree morphology within this conjoined construction, thus requiring a novel analysis of the semantics of conjoined comparison in SSM, and an expansion of the typology of comparatives more widely, to account for this unattested “mixed” construction.