1. Introduction
Traditionally, morphemes have been divided into derivational and inflectional classes, in what is sometimes referred to as the Split Morphology Hypothesis (Matthews Reference Matthews1972, Wasow Reference Wasow, Culicover, Wasow and Akmajian1977, Anderson Reference Anderson1982, Perlmutter Reference Perlmutter, Hammond and Noonan1988, Beard Reference Beard, Spencer and Zwicky1998, Stump Reference Stump, Spencer and Zwicky1998).Footnote 1 According to this split, derivational morphemes, unlike inflectional ones, change syntactic class, involve idiosyncratic meaning and do not interact with syntactic rules. In addition, it has been suggested that (productive) inflectional morphology should always be peripheral to derivational morphology. Under this view, the grammaticality contrasts in (1) follow from the order between inflectional morphemes (exemplified by plural and comparative marking) and category changing derivational morphemes.
(1)
a. ✓Root-Deriv.-Infl.:
agreements luckier
agree-ment-s luck-y-er
b. *Root-Infl.-Deriv.
*menly *biggerness
man.pl-ly big-er-ness
The idea that derivational morphemes change lexical or syntactic category is challenged by the old observation that many affixes involved in deriving new word forms (hence classified as derivational) do not necessarily change the lexical category of the word (Beard Reference Beard, Spencer and Zwicky1998). Some well-known English examples are un- in unhappy, re- in rewrite, -ish in greenish, among many others (see Lieber Reference Lieber1980, Selkirk Reference Selkirk1982, Newell Reference Newell2008, a.o.). Unlike other derivational affixes (e.g., -ness, -ment, etc.) which change the lexical category of the base they attach to by projecting their own categorial feature, these affixes do not project; as such, the category feature of the base is maintained. These affixes can therefore be seen as examples of word-internal modification in the domain traditionally known as derivation (see, for example, Newell Reference Newell2008, who calls them “morphological adjuncts”; also Lieber Reference Lieber1980).Footnote 2
A sharp split between derivational and inflectional morphology, as suggested by the Split Morphology Hypothesis, has been challenged further in the past few decades, with various linguists presenting cases of morphemes typically categorized as inflectional showing properties associated with derivational morphology (see, for example, Scalise Reference Scalise1984, Booij Reference Booij, Booij and van Marle1993, Rainer Reference Rainer, Booij and van Marle1996, van Marle Reference van Marle, Booij and van Marle1996, Bobaljik Reference Bobaljik, Booij and van Marle2005). Most relevant to the present paper is Wiltschko's (Reference Wiltschko2008) account of plural marking in Halkomelem Salish. Plural marking is often presented as a canonical example of inflectional morphology in the nominal domain (Booij Reference Booij, Booij and van Marle1996, Stump Reference Stump, Spencer and Zwicky1998, a.o.). Inflectional morphology is taken to be what is relevant for syntax, an idea captured in the generative tradition of the past few decades by the instantiation of a functional category. Ritter (Reference Ritter1992), for example, takes plural to be the instantiation of a functional head associated with number marking. Crucially, Wiltschko (Reference Wiltschko2008) shows that plural marking in Halkomelem Salish has distributional properties quite distinct from those of its inflectional counterpart in a language like English, even though the semantics of plural is quite similar in the two languages. In Halkomelem, plural marking is not obligatory, does not trigger obligatory agreement, and can be found inside compounding and derivation. She concludes that the functional head analysis of plural marking in languages such as English cannot be extended to Halkomelem. Instead, she argues that the distributional properties of Halkomelem plural derive from its distinct syntax, which she analyzes as word-internal modification. Hence, the existence of word-internal modification, already established in the domain of derivation, is extended to inflection.Footnote 3
This squib investigates the Persian comparative marker in light of the above discussion. It is worth noting that comparatives (and superlatives) are often presented as canonical examples of inflectional morphology across languages (Booij Reference Booij, Booij and van Marle1996, Stump Reference Stump, Spencer and Zwicky1998, among others).Footnote 4 Persian comparatives are also classified as inflectional (see, for example, Mahootian Reference Mahootian2002, Kazemian and Hashemi Reference Kazemian and Hashemi2014). As we will see below, while the Persian comparative marker has similar semantics to its English counterpart, it behaves in many ways like a non-inflectional suffix; that is, it cannot be treated as a projecting functional head. As a result, the comparative form of an adjective has a distribution very similar to that of a simple adjective. It will be argued here that these properties of the Persian comparative can best be accounted for as word-internal modification, similarly to Wiltschko's proposal for the Halkomelem plural.
2. Persian Comparative: Some Properties
Persian has a highly productive comparative marker –tar, exemplified in (2).
(2) a. bozorg-tar b. baalaa-tar c. kuchik-tar
big-comp high-comp small-comp
‘bigger’ ‘higher’ ‘smaller’
The comparative marker –tar behaves like a derivational suffix in Persian with respect to word level stress. In Persian, stress falls on the last syllable of the word, as shown for an adjective, a noun and a verb in (3), where an acute accent shows stress.
(3) a. bozórg b. pesár c. raqsíd
‘big’ ‘boy’ ‘danced’
When suffixes are added, stress falls on these suffixes if they are derivational, as in (4), but not if they are inflectional, as in (5); see Kahnemuyipour (Reference Kahnemuyipour2003) and Kahnemuyipour (Reference Kahnemuyipour, Sedighi and Shabani-Jadidi2018).
(4) a. bozorg-í b. pesar-aané c. raqsid-án
big-ness boy-ish danced-nom
‘bigness, greatness’ ‘boyish’ ‘dancing’
(5) a. pesár-i b. raqsíd-am
boy-indef danced-1sg
‘a boy’ ‘I danced’
The comparative marker –tar behaves like a derivational suffix in this respect. As can be seen in (6), word-level stress falls on the comparative marker.
(6) a. bozorg-tár b. baalaa-tár c. kuchik-tár
big-comp high-comp small-comp
‘bigger’ higher’ ‘smaller’
The comparative form in Persian can undergo conversion (i.e., it can be selected by a null nominalizing head) just like a simple adjective. In (7), both the simple adjective form and the comparative form can undergo conversion and take the plural marker (7a), or the colloquial definite maker (7b).
(7)
a. bozorg(-tar)-aa ro gozaasht-am ru miz
big-comp-pl acc put-1sg on table
‘I put the big(ger) ones on the table.’
b. kuchik(-tar)-e tu yaxchaal-e
small-comp-def in fridge-is
‘The small(er) one is in the fridge.’
Finally, there is a nominalizing suffix –i in Persian which is very productively added to simple adjectives to make nouns. Some examples are given in (8).
(8) a. bozorg-i b. kuchik-i c. sangin-i
big-nom small-nom heavy-nom
‘bigness, greatness’ ‘smallness’ ‘heaviness’
The same nominalizing suffix can be added to comparative forms, as shown in (9). These examples may seem unusual at first sight, but they are much more natural in the right context. A contextualized example is given in (10).Footnote 5
(9) a. bozorg-tar-i b. kuchik-tar-i c. sangin-tar-i
big-comp-nom small-comp-nom heavy-comp-nom
‘*biggerness’ ‘*smallerness’ ‘*heavierness’
(10) a. Context: You are looking for an apartment and making comparisons based on size.
A: fekr ne-mi-kon-i un aapaartemaan bozorg-tar bud?
think neg-dur-do-2sg that apartment big-comp was
‘Don't you think that apartment was bigger?’
B: bozorg-tar-i o kuchik-tar-i-sh baraa-m mohem nist
big-comp-nom and small-comp-nom-its for-me important isn't
‘Its being bigger or smaller is not important to me.’
In the next section, I provide an analysis that can capture the properties of the Persian comparative marker.
3. Persian Comparative: Syntactic Structure
In the previous section, we saw that with respect to word stress, the Persian comparative marker behaves like a derivational suffix, being included in the domain of stress assignment which is word-final. We also noted that it can undergo conversion or take the nominalizing suffix –i, just like a simple adjective. In order to capture these properties, I propose that the Persian comparative marker is an example of word-internal modification (akin to Wiltschko's Reference Wiltschko2008 proposal for Halkomelem plural). More specifically, the comparative marker is adjoined to the adjectivizing head. As such, when the comparative marker is merged in the structure, it does not project, but rather extends the adjectival projection.Footnote 6 The resulting structure behaves like a simple adjective from a morpho-syntactic perspective, taking stress on its final syllable and allowing the suffixation available to simple adjectives. The corresponding structure for the Persian comparative is shown, contrasted with English, in (11) with the ability to attach a nominalizing suffix used as an example.Footnote 7
(11) a. Persian b.English
Below we contrast the behaviour of English and Persian comparative constructions in three more syntactic domains, providing further support for the structures shown in (11). First, while English uses different intensifiers for simple and comparative forms of adjectives, Persian uses the same form, as shown in (12). This can be attributed to a difference in selectional requirements associated with the structures in (11).Footnote 8
(12)
a. English: Different intensifiers for simple adjectives and comparatives
very/*much big vs. much/*very bigger
b. Persian: Same intensifier for simple adjectives and comparatives
xeyli bozorg vs. xeyli bozorg-tar
very big very big-comp
When comparing two elements in English, the comparative selects a PP headed by the specialized preposition than.Footnote 9 In Persian, there is no preposition used solely in the context of comparison; rather, the preposition az ‘of, from’ is used. This is shown in (13). Given the proposal being put forward here, the selection of the az-phrase by the comparative cannot be seen as syntactic selection by the comparative head. Instead, it follows the same pattern as other adjectives in Persian, such as xaali ‘empty’, por ‘full’, and jodaa ‘separate’, which also select a PP headed by az ‘from’.Footnote 10
(13) Ali az Maryam boland-tar ast
Ali from Maryam tall-comp is
‘Ali is taller than Maryam.’
Finally, while in Persian a simple adjective can be coordinated with a comparative form in a construction that denotes a gradual change in the status of an object, the parallel structure in English can only use coordination of comparative forms. This is shown in (14) for English and in (15) for Persian.Footnote 11 Note that in the Persian case, the coordination of two comparative forms is also available. The crucial point here is the availability of the coordination of the simple and comparative forms in Persian and its unavailability in English. If we assume that coordination requires like categories, then the contrast between English and Persian illustrated in (14)–(15) provides support for the structural difference given in (11).Footnote 12
(14) a. Superman flew high*(-er) and higher.
b. Day by day, the tree grew tall*(-er) and taller.
(15) a. superman baalaa(-tar) va baalaa-tar raft
Superman high-comp and high-comp went
‘Superman went higher and higher.’
b. deraxt har ruz bozorg(-tar) va bozorg-tar mi-sh-e
tree every day big-comp and big-comp dur-become-3sg
‘Every day, the tree gets bigger and bigger.’
4. Conclusion
In this squib I have shown that Persian comparative forms behave in many ways like simple adjectives: they receive word-final stress, they can undergo conversion to a noun, they can take the nominalizing suffix –i, they take the same intensifier as the simple adjective and they can be coordinated with a simple adjective in a construction that indicates gradual change in the status of an object. To account for these properties, I have proposed that in Persian, the comparative morpheme does not project, and should best be understood as an adjunct to the adjectival category-changing head. This challenges the traditional classification of the comparative marker as an inflectional morpheme, which in more modern parlance is translated into instantiating a functional head. Wiltschko (Reference Wiltschko2008) showed that this functional-head representation of number cannot be applied to plural marking in a language like Halkomelem, which she analyzed as word-internal adjunction in the nominal domain. I have extended Wiltschko's analysis to an area which had not been explored before, namely comparatives in Persian. The Persian comparative thus joins the growing set of examples of morphemes that defy the traditional split between derivation and inflection, and whose behavior can best be explained by a better understanding of their syntax.
