PHP doesn't have a built-in ORM. Which framework/library are you talking about?
Django:
Item.objects.filter(price__gt=3)
Pony ORM: select(o for o in Item if o.price>3)
Peewee: Item.select().where(Item.price>3)
Kohana: $Item->where('price', '>', 3)->find();
You see, the __gt or '>' here is kind of stupid.