Plausibility of Conceptual Expansion of Nominal Participants

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Starting with the typological survey of Japanese-type languages which allow the conceptual expansion of the comparative standard in the basic comparative construction and English-type languages which do not allow the same type of expansion, this research tried to identify the general conditions licensing the conceptual expansion of nominal participants in a given sentence. As a result, the following general tendency was found : the participant in question should be either lexically selected by the main predicate of the given clause, or ceded a salient status from the standpoint of the constructional meaning. In other words, conceptual expansion of a nominal participant is likely to be induced when that participant is regarded as a salient element in the clause.