Някои семантични наблюдения върху сравнението в английския и българския език

Some semantic factors affecting the concrete realization in English and Bulgarian of the comparison operator are dwelt upon. The categorial meaning of this operator is defined and its direct dependence on the ‘GRADABLE’ feature of the compared items is thrown into relief. It is noteworthy that this feature may be either inherent in the lexical items or assigned secondarily. It is also argued that the direction of the comparison should follow that of meaning inclusion in the hierarchy. According to the proposition status a distinction is drawn between ‘general’ and ‘partial’ comparison. Cases in which the operator affects the modal characteristics of the sentence are considered as well. In conclusion the choice of an exponent has been found to be directly related to the items governed by the comparison operator.