Differential Comparatives: A Comparative Study of Pashto and Hindi/Urdu

Abstract

The major goal of this study is to explore differential comparatives in Pashto. This is done while keeping the behavior of differential comparatives in Hindi/Urdu (H/U) (Bhatt & Homer 2018) and English before us. The analysis of differential comparatives is carried out, first, in terms of differences between bare comparatives and differential comparatives, and then, in terms of differential comparatives as a constituent, argument structure restrictions, and adjacency restrictions. Since Pashto is a TAM based split-ergative Indo-Iranian language, therefore, the expectation is that the differential comparatives in Pashto would be a replica of differential comparatives in H/U in terms of different features; however, after this study, it is established that there are substantial differences between Pashto and H/U. Consequently, an argument structure is proposed for Pashto, which is completely different from the one proposed for H/U.