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Re: Degrees of adjectives

From:René Uittenbogaard <ruittenb@...>
Date:Saturday, February 5, 2005, 6:01
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. > > The context always tells the speakers how many items are being > compared.
Except when the context is missing. Let's see what we'd have: X is adj (positive) X is (as) adj-EQ as/like Y (equative) X is adjer (comparative/superlative) X is adjer than Z (comparative) X is adjer than Z and Q (comparative/superlative) X is adjer than all others (superlative) X is (the) adjer of (the) two (comparative/superlative) X is (the) adjer of (the) three (superlative) X is (the) adjer of all (superlative) If you further collapsed the conjunction/prepositions "than" and "(the) .. of", we would lose the distinction between whether X is included in the set or not, giving us the interesting: X is adjer than/of Q X is adjer than/of Q and Z X is adjer than/of X and Z X is adjer than/of X, Z and Q This looks like it works :) You would then also lose the strange situation that "than" is a conjunction and "(the)..of" is a preposition, enabling us to say what can't be said in English (supposing that we have a way to compare fastness of reading and talking, e.g. in wpm): I can read as fast as these people can talk. I can read faster than these people can talk. *I can read fastest of all people can talk.
> I also use the equative degree in Senyecan.
It's interesting to see that you remove redundancy on the side of comparative/superlative, and introduce redundancy by splitting positive and equative :) Éylo, René