Re: Comparison of adjectives (was Re: Reviving an old tradition)

> > In designing the revision to Ithkuil (called Ilaksh), I have expanded
>the
> > morphology of comaratives significantly, based on my discovery of how
> > complicated and semantically ambiguous comparatives really are in
>natural
> > languages, as illustrated in an ambiguous sentence like "She is
> > healthier."
> > There is ... a semantic division between absolute value of a quality
> > (i.e., the statement is true regardless of one’s knowledge or contextal
> > point of view) versus relative value of a quality (i.e., the
>truthfulness
> > of the statement depends on the context or point of view:
>
>One thing which stood out to me in these examples and the other examples
>you gave is a difference between comparisons of something with something
>else and comparisons of something with itself at different times.  In fact,
>I might just grammaticalize that in Seezzitonian.
>                  Dennis Paul Himes    <>    himes@cshore.com
I noticed that too. Also, the remaining differences seemed to be primarily
fine-tuning of the self-comparision scale, with regards to some "neutral
position": ie. whether both the new and the old state, or only one of them,
or neither, are abuv this value. Forms where either state falls exactly on
this norm could also be considered, eg.
"The grass is as green as usually"
"The grass is greener than usually"
"The grass is back to its usual color"
or, comparing different objects -
"This spruce is of average height"
"This spruce is of average height, but still taller than that other one"
"This spruce is taller than average spruces such as that one"

John Vertical