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Re: Degrees of adjectives

From:Muke Tever <hotblack@...>
Date:Saturday, February 5, 2005, 0:01
Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> wrote:
>> On an etymological level, the "opposite" of |comparative| would >> be *|separative|--"compare" being literally to bring together [such >> as for the purpose of comparison], > > Yes, but with "Z is less adj than X" Z and X are still being brought > together for comparison. There's no separation.
Actually, I thought about that, and [in a different sense, you could say] Z is being held farther away from the standard of "adj" than X is (that is, instead of considering X and Z compared to each other, considering them compared to the standard of "adj"ness). But that is of course an unusual way of looking at it. :p
>> and of |superlative|, *|sublative|, >> but that's perhaps a little silly. > > the main problem with 'sublative' is that those who know any Latin will > know that _sublatum_ is the supine of _sufferre_ "to suffer" which is the > wrong meaning.
Sublative is still used as a case name, I think. "Suffer" may be the predominant meaning but isn't the literal meaning of _suffere_. *Muke! -- website: http://frath.net/ LiveJournal: http://kohath.livejournal.com/ deviantArt: http://kohath.deviantart.com/ FrathWiki, a conlang and conculture wiki: http://wiki.frath.net/