Re: Degrees of adjectives

Peter Bleackley <Peter.Bleackley@...> wrote:
> I'm NOMAIL at the moment, so please reply to this personally.
>
> Are there standard linguistic terms for degrees of adjectives that express
> "less" and "least"?
Do they even occur in natl-- (ahaha, silly question.  of course
they have to, somewhere).

Well, I don't know of any standard terms.  But this is CONLANG, so
I won't be daunted from making some up :p

(given) X is adj          (positive)
         X is adjer than Z (comparative)
         X is adjest       (superlative)

(say)   Z is not adj         (negative, most likely)
         Z is less adj than X (anticomparative?[1])
         Z is least adj       (antisuperlative?)

On an etymological level, the "opposite" of |comparative| would
be *|separative|--"compare" being literally to bring together [such
as for the purpose of comparison], and of |superlative|, *|sublative|,
but that's perhaps a little silly.


	*Muke!
[1] There actually is a ghit for 'anticomparative' in this sense;
someone's conlang uses it:
http://www.geocities.com/arandeth/alvare/history-regnosians-grammar.html
They use "antiultimate" for *antisuperlative though, just as they
use 'ultimate' for 'superlative'.)
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