Re: Positive - Comparative - Superlative

At 10:31 pm -0700 9/3/01, Scott W. Hlad wrote:
[....]
>
>My modern language studies have alwyas laid out the comparison of adjectives
>in three layers, postitive comparative and superaltive, big, bigger,
>biggest.
Then I guess you haven't studied modern Breton, Welsh or Gaelic where text
books give _four_ degrees of comparison.  For example, in Welsh:

POSITIVE  EQUATIVE          COMPARATIVE  SURPERLATIVE
cryf      cryfed            cryfach      cryfa
(strong)  (as strong [as])  stronger     strongest

da        cystal            gwell        gorau
(good)    (as good)         (better)     (best)

[....]
>
>I have seen some conlangs that extend this system as if in a mirror with a
>reverse side sort of
>
>ante-superlative ante-comparitive positive comparative superlative, 5 points
>on a continuum instead of 3 on a continuum.
I think the prefix is anti- ?

I have these set out in books thus:
  SUPERIORITY    more beautiful       most beautiful
  INFERIORITY    less beautiful       least beautiful

>I'd like to see this expanded
>even more. The problem is how to express the continuum.
Indeed - e.g. it seems to me that the equative degree should come in the
middle of the 'continuum', not the positive, thus:

least hansome ~ less hansome ~ as handsom ~ more handsome ~ most hansome

...which, of course, poses the question where one shows the 'positive'.

And other languages, apparently, have other degrees of comparison, e.g. Basque:
_handi_ (big) --> EXCESSIVE: _handiegi_ (too big)

Ray.

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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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