Basic English Syntax with Exercises

superlative form of adjectives

1.3.4.3 Adjectives

The morphology of adjectives is an interesting area, though slightly more complex than that of verbs and nouns. There are three main adjectival morphemes which we might use to identify members of the category. First, many adjectives have three distinct forms relating to the straightforward adjective (traditionally called the positive form), the situation in which two elements are compared with respect to the property expressed by the adjective (the comparative form) and the situation in which more than two elements are compared (the superlative form):

1.3.4.3 Adjectives

Although there are few irregular adjectival inflections for comparative and superlative (many – more – most, good – better – best, far – further – furthest being obvious examples), there are a number of adjectives which do not take part in this morphological paradigm at all. One class of adjectives that do not have comparative or superlative forms are those which cannot be used for the basis of comparison from a semantic point of view. Obviously, the notion of comparison involves properties that can be graded into more or less: the property long, for example, covers a whole range of lengths, some longer some shorter. A long piece of string could be anything between, say 1 metre and infinitely long. We can therefore compare two elements in terms of their lengths and determine that one is longer than the other. Some adjectives however, do not express properties that can form the basis of comparison: some states such as being dead or being married are absolute or ungradable, so someone cannot be more dead or more married than someone else. Clearly ungradable adjectives are not going to have comparative or superlative forms:

1.3.4.3 Adjectives

In the above cases there is a semantic explanation for the lacking forms. In other cases however, there are other explanations. Quite a few adjectives are morphologically complex, being derived from nouns or verbs. It seems that morphologically complex adjectives cannot bear the comparative and superlative morphemes:

1.3.4.3 Adjectives

We need not go into this any further. The main point that concerns us here is that the less productive nature of these adjectival morphemes makes them less reliable as a test for adjectival status than we have seen in the case of verbs and nouns. Obviously, if a word can appear in a comparative or superlative form, it is an adjective, but failure to do so cannot automatically lead us to a negative conclusion.

1.3.4.3 Adjectives

As a further observation, adverbs, like adjectives, can appear in contexts of comparison and hence in comparative and superlative constructions:

1.3.4.3 Adjectives

Adverbs, however, tend not to have comparative or superlative forms:

1.3.4.3 Adjectives

The reason for this is probably because these adverbs are morphologically complex and as we have seen morphologically complex adjectives tend not to have such forms. This is supported by the fact that adverbs not formed with the ‑ly morpheme can have morphological comparative and superlative forms:

1.3.4.3 Adjectives

Interestingly, for adjectives the derivational morpheme ‑ly does not block the comparative and superlative morphemes, as we have seen:

1.3.4.4 Prepositions

Morphologically there is very little to say about this category as they tend to be morphologically simple and do not have inflectional forms. However, this is a property that we may use to identify an instance of the category: they are the category that do not have plural, tensed, comparative or superlative forms:

1.3.5.2 Determiners

Traditionally this group of quantifiers are known as post-determiners as they always follow other determiners (which are sometimes called central determiners). This terminology gives the impression that post-determiners are a subclass of determiner, which is likely to be inaccurate. These elements often have many adjectival qualities, including being able to be modified by degree adverbs and having comparative and superlative forms:

1.3.5.3 Degree Adverbs

Clearly, these behave exactly like the periphrastic constructions, and hence would seem to involve a degree adverb. The obvious choice would be the comparative and superlative morphemes themselves, which would suggest an analysis similar to what was proposed for verbal inflections: the comparative and superlative are independent lexical elements which are inserted into an expression separately into the degree adverb position and then by a syntactic process become attached to the adjective:

1.3.5.3 Degree Adverbs

Clearly, these behave exactly like the periphrastic constructions, and hence would seem to involve a degree adverb. The obvious choice would be the comparative and superlative morphemes themselves, which would suggest an analysis similar to what was proposed for verbal inflections: the comparative and superlative are independent lexical elements which are inserted into an expression separately into the degree adverb position and then by a syntactic process become attached to the adjective:

1.3.6 Functionally underspecified categories

Next, let us consider possible non-thematic non-functional adjectives. Recall that post-determiners are elements which seem to have adjectival properties in that they have comparative and superlative forms and may be modified by adverbs:

1.3.6 Functionally underspecified categories

However, degree adverbs do not have comparative and superlative forms and so it would be inaccurate to categorise the post-determiners as functional adjectives (i.e. as [+F, +N, +V]). Therefore we propose that these elements be categorised as [+N, +V] elements. It seems that post-determiners always select nominal complements, which is why they have been confused with determiners and hence they have the following lexical entries: