Delahunty and Garvey
positive comparative superlative
old older oldest
beautiful more beautiful most beautiful
A short adjective (one of 1-2 syllables) takes the {-er} and {-est} inflectional
endings. Longer adjectives, including some 2-syllable words such as alone,
may be modified by more and most, a class of words called intensifiers which
includes very and quite.
Exercise
Using Analytic Tests 7a and 7b, identify which of the following words
can be made comparative and/or superlative: strong, honest, retali-
ate, harsh, uncommon, local, intensify.
While these criteria are very powerful, they do not work for all adjectives, es-
pecially scientific adjectives such as nuclear and barometric. Fortunately, other
types of tests are available:
analytic test 8. A word may be an adjective if it actually ends in an adjec-
tival derivational suffix.
Table 6 lists some of the major adjectival suffixes in English.
-ish boorish, skittish
-al comical, alphabetical
-ar nuclear, circular
-ful cheerful, careful
-some winsome, awesome
-y funny, uncanny
-ic choleric, atmospheric
-able/ible debatable, sensible
-ing interesting, amusing
-ed disputed, concerned
table 6: adjectival derivational endings