The morphological category of degrees of comparison

When some property of a substance (object or phenomenon) is evaluated in relation to a property of some other substance, one deals with the category of degrees of comparison of adjectives, e.g. She is the oldest (in the family); my elder sister. The marked forms (- er, -est) are systemically opposed to the non-marked ones.

Only qualitative adjectives enter the category of degrees of comparison.

The linguistic status of the so-called analytical degree of comparison merits consideration. Thus quite a number of practical grammars state that there are two ways of forming the degrees of comparison of adjectives:

· synthetic (suffixes -er, -est) (monosyllabic adjectives and disyllabic adjectives except those ending in two plosives, e.g. more direct, rapt; or: disyllabic with the stress on the second syllable or ending in -er, -y, -le, -ow; yet the rule is often violated in the present-day English language, e.g. healthier – more healthy, nobler – more noble, etc.)

· analytical (more and most).

One of the strongest arguments for this approach is that adjectival forms with more and most are in complementary distribution with the -er, -est forms. Yet this approach is not consistent due to the following considerations:

(1) more and most preserve their lexical meaning, in which they are contrasted to less and least that denote the weakening of quality. The latter cannot be included into the category of degrees of comparison because they do not have a grammatically expressed synthetic parallel;

(2) there are the so-called “elative” more and most which intensify the respective quality: e.g. a most important point. Following the line of reasoning in 1), we cannot include them into the category of degrees of comparison (otherwise we should consider including the combinations with very, extremely, etc.). Besides, the adjectives that enter the morphological category of degrees of comparison can be used in elative structures, too: e.g. a most brave action;

(3) more and most modify adjectives (e.g. more attractive – less attractive; very attractive – rather attractive), which means that they are related syntactically. This is another argument against including the forms with more and most into the category of degrees of comparison since, by definition, the elements of an analytical form are not syntactically related.

Thus, following the traditional line of reasoning, only monosyllabic qualitative adjectives and some disyllabic ones can be said enter the morphological category of degrees of comparison. Yet the very existence of the term “analytical degrees of comparison” is an argument for treating linguistic categories, morphological in particular, as entities built according to the prototype principle. According to this principle, there are " better" and " worse" examples among the members of a category.