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Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XXXIV: Papers from the Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics, Tucson, Arizona, 2020
Edited by Mahmoud Azaz
[Studies in Arabic Linguistics 12] 2023
► pp. 185–210

Equative degree quantification in Damascene Arabic

ORCID logo | Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence

In this paper, I document a degree-equative construction in contemporary Syrian Arabic. This construction is headed by the noun ʔadd meaning ‘size’ or ‘extent’, but I demonstrate extensive parallels in distribution between ʔadd and the comparative phrase aktar min ‘more than’. These parallels suggest that like the comparative, ʔadd functions as a degree quantifier, an operator that binds a degree variable in its scope. But it stands in the same asymmetric entailment relation to aktar min that English as much as does to more, indicating that ʔadd is an equative counterpart of aktar min parallel to English as much as.

Keywords: equative, comparative, degree, semantics
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Aktar min ‘more than’
  • 3.ʔadd ‘as much as’: Basic parallels to aktar
  • 4.Additional parallels between ʔadd and aktar
  • 5.On the meaning of ʔadd
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 6 January 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sal.12.08hal
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