Comparatives in English

In Old English, comparatives and superlatives were always formed by a suffix. From the 13th century, that system changes and now: one syllable words mainly use -er and -est forms, three or more syllables words use the periphrastic more and most construction; and the largest group of variability is with two-syllable words.

A survey of grammars over the last four centuries reveals that constraints have only slowly been introduced into prescriptive advice to the point where the current rules are too simplistic and more restrictive than usage would indicate.

- In Johnson’s 1640 grammar, there is no special distinction between the inflectional and periphrastic. For example, he cites wiser, more wise, wisest, and most wise without any preference.

- A 1700 grammar by Lane purports to give the “exactest rules.” Examples: for adjectives, he says “I can say in good sense: more hard, most hard, very hard.” Respect to comparative, he says that it “signifies the same as the positive with the particle more before it.” Again, there is no preference indicated for either form.

- Gildon and Brightland give -er, -est, most, and very as options. They advise that “These are three, which have an irregular manner of being compared as good, better, best, bad, or ill, worse, (and worser), etc. so more worser seems to be a legitimate possibility from this advice. This seems to be a triple comparison and they are now considered non-standard.

- Kirkby talks about adding -er and -est and gives spelling rules for stems with a final -e or a final consonant preceded by a short vowel.  The comparative is formed by prefixing the word more and superlative most, to the positive.

- Priestley give some reasons for choosing the periphrastic over the suffixes. He says that some adjectives avoid a harshness in the pronunciation and they are compared, not by any change of termination, but by particles prefixed.  By polysyllables, he is apparently referring to words of three or more syllables. He also says that there are some dissyllables that would not admit the termination -er or -est without a harshness in the pronunciation.

- Murray allows for some variation among monosyllabic adjectives. Among disyllables, he cites those ending in y, “in le after a mute” or accented on the last syllable as the ones which easily admit of -er and -est. Example: he gives abler and ablest of an -le word. Murray notes that words of more than two syllables hardly ever admit of those terminations.

- Sweet says that the periphrastic is used with longer and more unfamiliar adjectives. There is no question that length (syllables) is a significant constraint. As for familiarity (it is not easy to measure) but it may interact with length since short adjectives tend to make up the bulk of the most common ones. Sweet gives a long list of adjective groups that favour either the inflectional or periphrastic methods of comparison. Favouring the suffixes are: monosyllables, disyllables with final stress. (excepts those which ends in a -pt, -ct, -nt) and many disyllables with initial stress, but not those in –ish, -s, and –st, to avoid repeating sibilants in the superlative suffix. Favouring the periphrastic are: all adjectives of more than two syllables, those in –ful, those in –ed and –ing (verbal forms).

Current constraints on variation

Monosyllabic. The inflections have been little studied, since the bisyllabic words are more variable and tend to be more interesting to researchers. The word ending that occurs most often is consonant clusters (CC) and the word ending that occurs less often is bad.

Bisyllabic forms. Quirk say that many can take inflections but they have the alternative of periphrastic forms. Numerous considerations separate which bisyllabic adjectives are in which category.

Ending in an unstressed vowel. Quirk say that unstressed final vowels favour inflections. There are several sub-groups.

Ending by -ly. This group mostly favours periphrastic, with the notable exceptions of the common words early and likely which tend to favour inflections. Even if the overall tendency for -ly words is towards the inflectional, this is mainly due to earliest and earlier alone.

Ending by -y. Two authors found that -y endings other than -ly favour inflections. Peters agrees but with a few exceptions. Worthy favours the periphrastic in Peters’ data and risky favours periphrastic for comparatives only. For superlatives, angry may favour periphrastic for Peters, “results are indeterminate”.

Ending in syllabic consonants. These include Peters’ -le group and v + nasal and might also include -er which could be a syllabic r for some speakers.

Ending in -le (Cl#). Two authors say that this favours inflections. Peters agrees, except for able (especially in the comparative). Peters cites a “quasi-modal” meaning as encouraging the periphrastic variant for able. Although there was only one token of a comparison using able, so the tendency for this word is inconclusive.

Ending in V + nasal (CN#). Peters has labelled this as vowel plus nasal, but I think it is better considered as a syllabic nasal following another consonant.

Ending in –er (Cr̩#). Peters groups -ure and -ere words into words that end in vowels, but that may not be a good grouping for those who pronounce final /r/ as a consonant. As far as -er words are concerned, my intuition is that a superlative ending in -erer would be disfavoured.

Consonant cluster endings (CC#).

Miscellaneous phonological shapes of roots

The groups discussed so far account for almost all the uses of the inflectional paradigm for comparison of bisyllabic roots in the QEP corpus. The few remaining ones will be presented here.

Quiet. It is difficult to say what the reasons are, but quiet seems to be in a class of its own. In the QEP data, there were 9 examples of quieter against 6 more quiet. Although the numbers are low, this seems to indicate a much more even distribution that that found by Peters in the British National Corpus.

Verb + -ing. It has been claimed, as already mentioned, that verbal forms ending in -ed and -ing cannot take the suffixes, but there were two examples of boringest in the QEP corpus, one of which was most boringest against only 6 tokens of most boring. The numbers are very low, but the speakers may be consciously flaunting the rule in these cases.

Stupid (Vd#). The only other bisyllabic comparative found with the suffixes of comparison was stupid, the sole representative in the QEP corpus of Peters’ V + d category, exemplified by wicked and solid. There were 5 examples of stupidest and 1 of most stupid along with one each of stupider and more stupid. This follows the direction of effect for wicked (although Peters only had 20 tokens in total for forms of wicked).

Other constraints

There are syntactic and rhetorical constraints hypothesized to affect this variant selection in addition to the morphophonemic ones just discussed. Mondorf gives 21 constraints for this variation:

- Phonology: length, final segment, avoidance of identity effects (stress clash avoidance, haplology, consonants clusters).

- Morphology: morphological complexity.

- Syntax: prepositional consonants, infinitival complements, position.

- Semantics: semantic complexity, concrete vs. abstract, literal vs. figurative, weak gradability.

- Lexicon: compounds, parallel structures, established in discourse.

- Pragmatics: proximity, end-weight, cumulative comparatives, emphasis, gradual increase.

Students are going to compare countries they have been to. In pairs, they have to make sentences comparing different countries or different cities, each time using a different adjective.  For example, “I think that Canada is cleaner than Spain because there is less pollution”.

The teacher gives the students a list of possible adjectives for describing places.

beautiful – ugly

big/ large – small/ little

clean – dirty/ polluted

cold – hot

convenient – inconvenient

crowded

dangerous – safe

easy to… - difficult to…/ hard to…

expensive – cheap

famous – unknown

green/ natural – built up

hilly – flat

historic/ traditional – modern

important – unimportant

interesting/ exciting – boring

loud – peaceful

near/ close – far

noisy – quiet

northerly – southerly

old – new

relaxing – stressful

romantic

urban – rural

well-connected – isolated

westerly – easterly

For a better knowledge of the activity we must explain first the methodology and afterwards the objectives that we expect to reach with this activity. In this apart we intend to set out the different questions that include the proposed exercise for teaching of comparatives and its use inside the English linguistics. In the first place, we explain the methodology that we have chosen and why. In second place, in a simplified way, the objectives we want to achieve with the practice of the chosen activity.  

The methodology that we have chosen is because it is composed for different parts: grammar, vocabulary, work in pairs, etc. We think it is the best way for a better achievement of the objectives. By the division in pairs the students had to make the activity through the comparative among distinct cities and countries of the world. For this, the students must have knowledge about vocabulary (a part of it will be given to them during the development of the exercise) and they also must keep in mind how the comparative is organised in English and its correct use. This activity has exceptions, which the students must know and put into practice. Some examples of alternatives are: early, slowly, heavy, cloudy, etc. When we talk about exceptions we mean that they possess alternatives to the main structure, that is, if we use the comparative we have to know their other forms. The most grammatical part of the exercise implies how to build coherent sentences to help students to develop the activity, their language level and the extension of the knowledge.

An important part inside of this methodology is the work in pairs, because the students learn how to cooperate together and, at the same time, about language and its use. This way, the knowledge is shared. The interaction between students and teacher is key in the expansion of the objectives to reach, of knowledge about the topic and the social relations inside the classroom. 

Once presented the methodology, we must set out the main objectives to reach, in a simplified way, we will expose:

-      To know the structure of the comparative and its use.

-      To identify the exceptions of different rules of comparative.

-      To increase the vocabulary and grammatical knowledge.

-      To learn to develop coherent sentences in English.

-      To learn to cooperate with other classmates.

Atenea Camacho García

Sara Fernández Magariño

Mihaela Daniela Ristea

Patricia Ramírez Pavón