Comparative Constructions in Tamil and English: A Comparative Study with the Existing Machine Translation Systems

Abstract

The concept of comparative construction is a linguistic technique used to demonstrate the similarities and differences between two or more items. Typically, a comparative construction is composed of a predicate and two noun phrases. One noun phrase serves as the "criterion" of the comparison, while the other functions as the object of comparison (the comparee NP). Sentences like "Raja is taller than John" exemplify comparative constructions, wherein the noun phrase following the word "than" functions as the standard NP. A prototypical comparative construction includes three primary elements: the participants of comparison (comparee and standard of comparison), the property (parameter of comparison), and the index of the comparison. However, it's important to note that this paper does not explore into the typological study of comparative constructions. Instead, it focuses on the comparative constructions in Tamil as compared to English, and seeks to formulate rules for Machine Translation. The paper also involves testing the translation of comparative construction sentences from Tamil to English through existing Machine Translation systems, and discusses the obtained results.