Re: Augmentative adjectives

Josh Brandt-Young writes:
 > I was talking to Adam Parrish last night (remember Adam? He hasn't been on
 > the list for a bit), and as he was telling me about his recent trip to Utah,
 > the following phrase slipped out:
 >
 > "My family isn't as fatter as they were before."
 >
 > Meaning, I can only assume, "My family's fatness has not increased to the
 > same degree that it previously had," or "The degree to which my family's
 > fatness has increased was smaller this time than on previous visits."
 >
 > But I was extremely impressed by the economy of that expression versus the
 > verbose "standard" English translation. Do you guys' conlangs have some way
 > to express this? This had never, ever occurred to me before.
 >

My conlang can't, although I have had some vague thoughts about being
able to express the nth differential or integral of one quantity with
respect to another in some systematic fashion, which might help.

But in English, what about "My family wasn't as much fatter this
time."?  It's only 2 syllbles longer.  Granted, "this time" as
(implicitly) opposed to "previous occasions" isn't specified in the
original, but if it's not talking about the change between incidences
of fatness-measurement, then it's some kind of vague statement about
the second derivative of fatness over time (which it kind of is
anyway, but phrased in terms of discrete changes).

("... hadn't got as much fatter ..." would be more specific, for an
extra syllable.)