Talk
The od(d) behaviour of Polish comparatives
In Polish, there are multiple constructions available for expressing the comparative. Two of them – namely those introduced by particles ‘niż’ and ‘od’, respectively – show diverging behaviours: Despite them being mostly synonymous, some syntactic environments allow for only one of these constructions, produce different ambiguities, or force certain readings.
In earlier research, the ‘od’-construction had been mostly overlooked as it’s not considered part of the standard Polish language (język ogólnopolski).
A key finding was that ‘niż’ aligns with other complementisers in the Polish language, while ‘od’ behaves more like a preposition.
