"Suppletive" comparatives

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Cathbad
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"Suppletive" comparatives

Post by Cathbad »

I'm looking for examples of languages which force the use of different adjectives for compared qualities in comparative constructions. There's a list of "suppletive" comparatives here:

http://linguistlist.org/issues/17/17-490.html

This is quite useful; however, what I'm really looking for are examples where e.g. two semantically related (or unrelated) adjectives exist, but only one is used in comparative constructions. Similar to if English would (for example) prohibit the use of "warm-er" in favor of "hotter" - i.e. both warm-COMP and hot-COMP would be expressed with the adjective "hotter", and "warm-er" would not exist; however, I want to look at comparative constructions in general, rather than merely morphological comparatives. The WALS site on comparatives kind of implies this could be possible if there are general restrictions on certain attributives occurring in specific cases (for fixed-case comparatives), but I was wondering whether you guys know of any documented examples of this?

Any help would be much appreciated!

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Re: "Suppletive" comparatives

Post by Ser »

Some dictionaries, notably Merriam-Webster dictionaries, often list "wronger" and "wrongest" as comparative forms of "wrong". However, many speakers disagree with that, and even using "more/most wrong" too, preferring to use other comparatives such as "worse" or "(even) less accurate/precise" as comparatives. Interestingly, these same speakers usually don't have a problem with the expression "You couldn't be (any) more wrong".

I think Spanish might have a case of the opposite thing. Payaso as an adjective meaning "funny", figuratively, a clown (un payaso), can only be used when modified by tan 'so' or the comparative más 'more, most'—as far as I can tell.
  • Él es tan payaso.
    'He tells so many jokes all the time.'

    Él es más payaso que él.
    'He's funnier than him.'

    Él es el más payaso de la clase.
    'He's the funniest one in the class.'
Instead of the expected unmodified adjectival use, *Él es payaso, I feel compelled to treat this word as a noun:
  • Él es un payaso.
    'He's a clown.'
(This particularly weird example has led to a claim sometimes seen in Spanish textbooks for non-natives that Spanish can use nouns in comparisons this way in general—but I think it's really probably just limited to payaso and perhaps some other nouns I'm not aware of.)

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Re: "Suppletive" comparatives

Post by Miekko »

In many varieties of Ostrobothnian Swedish, there's
rama signifying someone with proper behavior | muscular build suited to manual work, hardiness
This never is used in the comparative or superlative for the proper behavior meaning, but the other meaning has the comparative väl`kan (IMD, in other dialects it may very well come out as väl`kar), superlative väl`kast. Väl`kan and väl`kast also are used when speaking of sturdiness of tools or implements: I need a sturdier crowbar: ja bö.öv In väl`kan kufout (but you'd almost never say 'ja bö.öv In rama kufout')
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Re: "Suppletive" comparatives

Post by Ulrike Meinhof »

Stuck-up prescriptivist Swedish prohibits comparing sakta 'slowly', favouring the synonyms långsammare and långsammast, respectively. I suspect, however, that most speakers intuitively only find the forms saktare and saktast a bit less formal-sounding, at the very most.
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Re: "Suppletive" comparatives

Post by Qwynegold »

Expanding on Finnish:
hyvä - parempi - paras = good - better - best
vähän - vähemmän - vähiten = a little/few - less/fewer - least(?)/fewest - The superlative form here doesn't follow the normal pattern; normal superlatives end with -in. The -en suffix is normally used on verbs and means "by the way of doing X". :?
? - lähempänä - lähin = near/close - nearer/closer - nearest/closest - The positive form here is the noun lähi which takes one of several possible locative cases. The comparative form seems to be NOUN-COMP-ESSIVE. :? The superlative seems like a regular superlative adjective to me.
kaukana - kauempana - kauimpana = far - farther - farthest - The positive is a noun with essive case, but I don't know what the lemma form would be. The comparative is NOUN-COMP-ESS. I'm not sure what's going on with the superlative.

And Swedish:
bra - bättre - bäst = good - better - best
dålig - sämre - sämst = bad (quality) - worse - worst
dålig - värre - värst = bad (situation or moral) - worse - worst
gammal - äldre - äldst = old - older - oldest
få - färre - minst (antal) = few - fewer - fewest - The superlative is difficult to form. I would stick antal (amount) after it.
liten - mindre - minst = small - smaller - smallest - Interesting to note here is that small.PL is små, so there's double suppletion for this word.
lite - mindre - minst = a little - less - least
gärna - hellre - helst = gladly - rather - ? - I don't know if one can say that gladly and rather are two forms of the same word, but gärna does not compare otherwise.
mycket - mer - mest = a lot - more - most
många - fler - flest = many - more - most
kul - roligare - roligast = fun - funner - funnest - Kul is not a word you would use in formal speech. It does not compare, so you would have to use the comparative and superlative forms of rolig, which also means fun, instead. So this seems to be the kind of thing you're looking for.

The situation with the two dålig words are kind of what you're looking for, but reversed. The word for fewest also seems to be what you're looking for. Oh another one: länge means for a long time, while lång just means long. Both compare längre - längst. But länge is clearly derived from lång. :/
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Re: "Suppletive" comparatives

Post by gach »

Qwynegold wrote:vähän - vähemmän - vähiten = a little/few - less/fewer - least(?)/fewest - The superlative form here doesn't follow the normal pattern; normal superlatives end with -in. The -en suffix is normally used on verbs and means "by the way of doing X". :?
Actually, since these are all adverbs, the final -n in all of these is the instructive ending and the comparison morphemes should come before it. Thus you can break up vähe-mmä-n as a.little-COMP-INSTR. The superlative form is not exactly suppletive but the -ite- morpheme, which seems to be carrying the superlative meaning, is irregular and somewhat mysterious.

The verb ending I think you are talking about is the 2nd infinitive instructive, prototypically -te-n. It should be completely unrelated to what we have here as you would have to have a verbal stem in order to be able to use it.

You encounter the same -ite- element as in vähiten when you build the adverbial comparison paradigm for hyvä/paras. This actually follows the same pattern as vähän except for using the -in allomorph* for the instructive for the first two forms.

hyvin - paremmin - parhaiten
"well" - "in a better way" - "in the best way"
? - lähempänä - lähin = near/close - nearer/closer - nearest/closest - The positive form here is the noun lähi which takes one of several possible locative cases. The comparative form seems to be NOUN-COMP-ESSIVE. :? The superlative seems like a regular superlative adjective to me.
You actually mixed here together an adjectival and a locational adverb paradigm. The full paradigm of the locational adverb is

lähellä - lähempänä - lähimpänä
lähe-llä - lähe-mpä-nä - läh-impä-nä
near-ADE - near-COMP-ESS - near-SUPER-ESS
"near by" - "closer" - "closest"

This is a slight tangent but demonstrates nicely how complicated the case marking of locational adverbs can be. First of all, these words often use archaic or completely obsolete cases such as the locatively used essive here. On top of this the positive form lähellä has to use the adessive case for exactly the same meaning with no apparent reason. Otherwise there is nothing irregular here.

Lähin comes from a adjective paradigm that in practice is lacking the positive form

Ø - lähempi - lähin
Ø - (sth.) nearer - (sth.) nearest

Technically these are the regular comparison forms of the noun lähi. A full and more versatile adjective paradigm from the same root is

läheinen - läheisempi - läheisin
near - nearer - nearest

which is again fully regular.
kaukana - kauempana - kauimpana = far - farther - farthest - The positive is a noun with essive case, but I don't know what the lemma form would be. The comparative is NOUN-COMP-ESS. I'm not sure what's going on with the superlative.
This is actually fully regular if you don't count the fossilised use of essive as a locative. The /i/ of the superlative -in ~ -impA eats away stem final /a æ e/ and the comparative changes stem final /a æ/ into /e/ in bisyllabic stems. And since the comparative and superlative are in weak grade they are missing the intervocalic /k/.

I don't think the stem kauka- appears anywhere on it's own. There is the the adjective kaukainen "(sth. that it) far away" and the derivation kauko- which appears in compounds.

I'll also add a few examples to the list:
paljon - enemmän - eniten, "much" - "more" - "most"
kiva, "fun, nice" - doesn't have comparison forms and trying to build ones is awkward. This is usually explained as Russian influenced pronunciation of hyvä, "good". You'll get the comparison forms from the full and regular paradigm
hauska - hauskempi - hauskin, "fun" - "more fun" - "most fun"
Kul is not a word you would use in formal speech. It does not compare, so you would have to use the comparative and superlative forms of rolig, which also means fun, instead. So this seems to be the kind of thing you're looking for.
Is that really so? I swear I've heard people using kulare. Though, to be honest this is from people who'll also use language like gå på leffa.

* The -i- in the -in instructive is formally described to be the same as the plural morpheme -i/j-. Whether this is the real origin of the element in all of the cases is another matter.

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Re: "Suppletive" comparatives

Post by Qwynegold »

gach wrote:irregular and somewhat mysterious.
Ooooh!

As for the rest, thanks for clearing that up. Finnish is a bitch to analyze. >.<
gach wrote:kiva, "fun, nice" - doesn't have comparison forms and trying to build ones is awkward. This is usually explained as Russian influenced pronunciation of hyvä, "good".
Huh, I had no idea. So it's lika Fi. [hyʋæ] :> Ru. [xʲiva] :> Fi. [kiʋɑ].
gach wrote:
Kul is not a word you would use in formal speech. It does not compare, so you would have to use the comparative and superlative forms of rolig, which also means fun, instead. So this seems to be the kind of thing you're looking for.
Is that really so? I swear I've heard people using kulare.
*cringe*
gach wrote:Though, to be honest this is from people who'll also use language like gå på leffa.
*double-cringe*
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Re: "Suppletive" comparatives

Post by gach »

Qwynegold wrote:
gach wrote:irregular and somewhat mysterious.
Ooooh!

As for the rest, thanks for clearing that up. Finnish is a bitch to analyze. >.<
Finnish adverbs are a bit tricky since their morphology has so many unproductive bits.

There is a bit of information on the -iten superlative adverbs at VISK: § 376 iten-adverbit. It's basically an unproductive adverb derivation that some adverbs have either instead or besides the regular adverb superlative -immin.

Looking at the list of attested -iten adverbs, points (a)-(c) at the VISK article, many of these appear to have restricted distribution. For me all the items under the point (a) except for helpoiten are firmly -iten adverbs. On the other hand I would myself either prefer -immin or use it exclusively for all the items under (b) and (c).

The end of the article lists some cases where the -iten ending appears together with the superlative -immin as -immiten. These are special birds as their semantics has always drifted away from a regular superlative adverb. So for example from useasti, "often", we have useimmin, "most often", but also useimmiten, "usually". There's even one case where the construct is based on the comparative: vanhemmiten, "towards old age", from vanhempi, "older".

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Re: "Suppletive" comparatives

Post by Qwynegold »

Ah yeah. For me all of those except for eniten are with -immin.
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