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Re: Degrees of adjectives

From:Tristan McLeay <conlang@...>
Date:Saturday, February 5, 2005, 13:20
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.