Re: Degrees of comparation

Sally Caves wrote:

> Someone wrote to me, I've forgotten who, and said she was
> looking for a conlang that thought in tertiary instead of binary
> form.  Teonaht is still pretty binary (good, bad; strong, weak)
> and I was wondering how to address that.
>
Strictly speaking, Nova isn't even binary.  A morpheme, generally used
as an adjectival (quality) element,  represents a range which I
arbitrarily and not very accurately label positive and negative.  More
accurate might be left and right because a dictionary, rather a
morphicon, entry will always have the range of meaning written the same
way, one end of the spectrum on the right, the other on the left.
Nova uses the following comparisons in its now cleaned up version,
NOVA    ENGLISH
zhú     absolutely negative state
ré      absolutely positive state
ge      negative state
bí      neutral state
sha     positive state
nir     somewhat negative state
yól     somewhat positive state
pung    very negative state
mon     very positive state

All of those labeled as positive, refer to the left element and
thus negative to the right element.
Consider 'pom' wide > narrow
pom.bí  neither wide nor narrow, would be used in a equative situation
pom.sha  wide
pom.yól  slightly wider
pom.mon  very wide
pom.ré   absolutely wide, widest possible
and so on with pom.ge 'narrow', etc.

Brad Coon
http://www.geocities.com/nowapan/