A Typology of Word CategoriesThis observation, however, will also require modification once we start to consider
adverbs and their relationship to 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):
(98) positive: tall sure clever
comparative taller surer cleverer
superlative tallest surest cleverest
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:
(99) dead set married frozen plural
deader setter marrieder frozener pluraler
deadest settest marriedest frozenest pluralest
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 morpho-
logically complex, being derived from nouns or verbs. It seems that morphologically
complex adjectives cannot bear the comparative and superlative morphemes:
(100) beautifuler beautifulest
Americaner Americanest
fortunater fortunatest
edibler ediblest
sunkener sunkenest
smilinger smilingest
There are, however, certain exceptions to this:
(101) smoke – smoky – smokier – smokiest
stretch – stretchy – stretchier – stretchiest
friend – friendly – friendlier – friendliest