Re: Comparison Terminology

On Wed, 28 Feb 2001 17:12:37 -0800, Matt Pearson <pearson@...>
wrote:

>Jeff Jones wrote:
>
>> > There's an additional (optional) component to comparatives, namely the
>> > "degree of comparison". The degree tells you the amount--as measured
>> > along the scale of comparison--by which the subject and standard of
>> > comparison diverge from each other. For example, in "John is two years
>> > older than Bill", the subject of comparison is "John", the standard of
>> > comparison is "Bill", the directionality is "(more)", the scale is
>> > "(age)", and the degree is "two years" (viz. on the scale of age, the
>> > measure of distance between John and Bill is two years).
>>
>> This component is something I hadn't thought about very much, yet. I had
>> been considering using "degree" for something like slightly more vs. more
>> vs. a lot more.
>
>Well, you can use "degree" for both, since they're mutually exclusive:
>
>  John is slightly older than Bill.
>  John is two years older than Bill.
>  * John is slightly two years older than Bill.
>
>Furthermore, they fulfill the same semantic function of indicating the
>distance between John and Bill on the scale of comparison:  It's just that
>"two years" represents a specific measurement of degree, while "slightly"
>and "a lot" are vaguer.
>
>Matt.
Thanks again!
Looking at my notes, I discovered that I made an error in that post: I've
actually been using the term "precision" for slightly more vs. more vs. a
lot more, not "degree"; but I'm glad I made the error, since it prompted
your additional comment. I also see that the dictionary uses "degree" in
the terms "positive degree", "comparative degree", "superlative degree",
which to me isn't very good -- I prefer your usage. But that brings up some
more questions:
A) What's the linguistic term for this sort of thing?
B) It seems to me that
 1) the "comparative" is an explicit comparison of one entity (or set of
entities) to one other entity,
 2) the "superlative" is a comparison of one entity to a number of others
within the same group, and
 3) the "positive" can be considered as an implicit comparison to some norm.
Is this reasonable?

Jeff

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