Re: Degrees of adjectives

On 5 Feb 2005, at 11.59 pm, caeruleancentaur wrote:

> --- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Scotto Hlad <scotto@A...> wrote:
>
>> I love the word "diminutive" but I hadn't been able to come up with
>> a word similar to minimative. That being said, when I
>> see "diminutive" I want to see an analogous term "augmentative"
>> rather than comparative. This makes me then want to see "maximative"
>> in the analogous position to "minimative"
>
>> Perhaps we could then think of the degree "comparative"
>> as "diminutive" and "augmentative" and the degree "superlative"
>> as "maximative" and "minimative" (or should it be "maxitive"
> and "minitive")
>
> However, the words "diminutive" and "augmentative" are already in use
> in morphology for another purpose.  Granted diminutive and
> augmentative suffixes are not used on adjectives in English (at least
> I can't think of any--whoops, darling comes to mind), but that may
> not be the case in other languages.
-y/-o/-er/-a are often described as diminuitives, though there's
nothing small about an 'arvo', which is really just a colloquial
australian word for 'afternoon'. (the -o gets tacked on after the f,
which is voiced, and the whole thing is given a spelling based on its
pronunciation ... it'd make no sense at all to pronounce the <r>.)
Perhaps they're called diminuitives because no-one's invented the word
colloquialiser yet.

--
Tristan.