Re: To What Extent is Standard Finnish a Conlang?

>- If a nominal has comparative and superlative forms, I call it
>"adjective". (Note that some of the things I call "substantive" have
>comparative forms; e.g. _ilta_ "evening" -> _illemmalla_ "later in
>the evening". They don't have superlative forms AFAIK, though.)
"Illoin"? :)
(...Yes, I know it's just a case of homomorfy. Moving on...)


>(And
>I'm sure that some of the things I call "adjective" don't form
>comparatives and/or superlatives, but I can't think of any off the
>top of my head, except for _pikku_ "little", which doesn't inflect
>for case or number either.
There's several roots like "pikku", "valko", "äkä", "etä" which seem to be
used almost solely as derived adjectives ("-inen"), but they still compound
without the suffix as usual. I guess "pikku" is an exception since it can
also be used as a separate attribute ("pikkukivi", "valkokivi", "pikku
koira"; but not *"valko koira")

(Translation for the rest of the list: "valkoinen" = white; "äkäinen" =
angry; "etäinen" = distant; "kivi" = stone; "koira" = dog)

I'm not sure if expressions like "pikku koira" and "pikkukoira" have any
difference, however (except in case either has a specialized meaning), so it
might be just a case of oddly allowing spelling these compounds with a
space. The rules for when to use a space in a compound and when to not
always seemed somewhat arbitrary to me anyway.


>As for other non-comparing
>(terminology??) adjectives, I guess that at least the usual semantic
>restrictions apply -- for example, words like "optimal" don't have a
>comparative or superlative because that would be silly. ;)
I still hear "optimaalisin" all the time. :)

Of course, my original point was NOT to say that there isn't a difference in
standard Finnish between what are usually called nouns and adjectives, but
just that the meaning of the word "noun" is wider.

>Regards,
>Julia
John Vertical

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