Re: NATLANG: Latin prefixes with er/ra

Paul Bennett wrote:

> There are a few that I can think of (knowing no Latin):
>
> super-/supra-
> ulter-/ultra-
> infer-/infra-
> inter-/intra-
>
> Is there some kind of pattern, other than that the first of each pair can
> prefix "-ior" in English? Or, indeed, is that itself a pattern that I'm
> too dense to work out? It's not[*] equitive vs comparative, it's not
> comparative vs superlative, it's not location vs direction, it's not
> proximal vs distal, and it's not any of a half dozen other things that
> have passed through my brain.
>
> Whatever the pattern is, I suspect that knowing it would shed light for me
> onto some greater issue with Latin, or possibly PIE.
>
Ya missed one: (*exter):extra

I think I might have raised the same questions a long time ago, and Ray
Brown no doubt clarified things....

My guess would be that at some point, the forms in -er were adjectival; the
forms in -ra were adverbials regularly derived via the Feminine Ablative.

Note that in addition to having comparatives in -ior, they _do_ have
superlatives -- in -imus (and a few -emus): supremus, ultimus, infimus,
intimus, extremus -- as well as some derivatives in -nal-: cf. Engl.
supernal, infernal, internal, external.