Re: Degrees of adjectives

--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, # 1 <salut_vous_autre@H...> wrote:
caeruleancentaur wrote:

>I decided that two degrees of comparison were redundant.  If they are
>not needed in Spanish (or French), they aren't needed in Senyecan.
Yes they exist, they are differenciated by the use of a definite
article

"Je suis plus rapide que toi" = "Soy más rapido que tú" = "I am
faster than
you"
"Je suis le plus rapide" = "Soy el más rapido" = I'm the fastest


>"Which of these two drinks do you prefer?"
>"I prefer the sweeter."
>"Prefiero la más dulce."
>
>"Which of these three drinks do you prefer?"
>"I prefer the sweetest."
>"Prefiero la más dulce.
>>I tought that in English the superlative needs a definite article
>>and that the comparative may only be after a verb like "be, become,
>>stay, seem"
Not so.  They can also be used attributively.  "This is the sweeter
drink of the two."  "This is the sweetest drink of the three."  The
difference is not in the use of the definite article but in the
morpheme suffixed to the adjective.  Surely the same thing can be
done in French.  I know it can in Spanish as my examples above show.
I just omitted the noun "bebida."


>>If not, I don't see any difference between "the sweetest" and "the
>>sweeter"
>>They would mean "the one that is the most sweet" and "the one that
>>is sweeter than the other(s)", the second means also that it is the
>>most sweet...
If you don't see a difference, then you can't distinguish -er from -
est.  And, as I already pointed out, -er is used for comparing only
two items.  -est is used for comparing three or more.  The forms
seems to be exactly the same in Spanish (and in French?) when used
attributively and not predicatively.

Predicatively:
"This drink is sweeter (más dulce) than that one."
"This drink is the sweetest (la más dulce) of the three."
Need for the definite article only with the superlative.  In Spanish
and French there is a difference in the construction.

Attributively:
"I prefer the sweeter (la más dulce) drink of the two."
"I prefer the sweetest (la más dulce) drink of the three."
Need for the definite article with both.  They are exactly the same
in Spanish (and in French?).

Thus my rather simplistic contention that having two degrees of
comparison can be redundant.

Charlie
http://wiki.frath.net/User:Caeruleancentaur