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