Re: syllable importance

Thomas R. Wier scripsit:

> Another option is to construe the problem as one of morphosyntax,
> rather than phonology:  some adjectives are simply marked as
> not capable of taking comparison of any kind, whether analytically
> or synthetically.  In my dialect I even have otherwise homophonous
> lexical pairs, such as "unique", which are semantically distinct
> ('hapactic' and 'special'), the first of which may not take comparison,
> while the second may.
Being incomparable may be lexical, but how comparison is done can't be,
because I have no trouble calling "wug:wugger:wuggest" the Right Thing,
and likewise "frazzbazzle:more frazbazzle:most frazbazzle",
and rejecting "*more wug" and "*frazbazzlest".

It may be that some rule such as the trochaic rule applies and that there
are numerous lexical exceptions on both sides.  Extended wug-tests with
naive subjects would be interesting.

--
In politics, obedience and support      John Cowan <jcowan@...>
are the same thing.  --Hannah Arendt    http://www.ccil.org/~cowan

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