Comparative vs. Superlative

I would say that I have two older sisters. Why go through any more intricate machinations?

That wouldn't do me any good if I'm saying, e.g., "my youngest sister is praiseworthy." I couldn't say "my younger sister is praiseworthy"--people would think she is younger than me (a male), whereas she is not. I could give her name, but that may not be what I want to communicate. Your example is different, because you are referring to both sisters, whereas the problem arises when referring to just one, or are referring to them individually.

How 'bout, "The younger of my two older sisters is praiseworthy"?

Lord, I love it, yawl. Since I am the baby in my family, I simply say, my older sister and my oldest sister.

Hey, step 314. Welcome to A2K. Quite frankly, don't make something difficult that is not. Simply state that both my sisters, one younger than I, and one older than I, are both delightful; however, the younger of the two sisters is quite praiseworthy.

Hi Step and Welcome, I'm with Phoenix. The younger of my two older sisters. If your sister is older than you, she can never be the youngest.

Pedantry?
"The younger of my two older sisters" is a mouthful compared with "my youngest sister." What besides reasons of tradition or pedantry would be the reason for preferring the former construction? It seems to me that "youngest" is a simple adjective, and can be used whenever it does not refer to some other noun (tacit or otherwise), but younger is an adjective that also refers back to some other noun (and so indeed can only be used to compare two things). Thus, when I say "younger sister", I am referring back to something else that the context can make obvious.

In math, for instance, no one would object if you said that A union B is the smallest subset of C containing both A and B, even if there is only one or two subsets of C containing both A and B. In math it would be a terribly awkward distinction to disallow the application of a superlative adjective to sets containing fewer than three members. I'd even say it is right to say that Arnold Schwarzenegger is the smallest present governor-elect of California. Why should it not be appropriate to use the superlative when there is just one thing? How about when there is nothing? What would be wrong with saying that there is no smallest purple giraffe? Makes sense to me.

Well, step. I guess we could also say 1+2= 4. Just a dumb old rule.

S+V=S
S+V+C=S

Good-better-best
Young-younger-youngest.

As they say in mountainese. Two wrong don't make hit right.

Another 10 cents worth..

Since Chomsky et al "Logic" and "Grammar" are not synonymous. i.e. Grammar is DEscriptive not PREscriptive...thus constructions like "ain't not" ARE grammatical in idiolects that consistently use the double negative (as do major languages such as French [ne-pas])

This discussion of comparatives presupposes a prescriptive concept of grammar, but in fact any ambiguities caused by normal rule applications are resolved by either additional contextual information ("mouthfuls") or idiopathic "rule breaking".

When you say "youngest" you are not comparing your two sisters, you are comparing your sister to a group that consists of both of your sisters. Of that group, she is the youngest. But she is younger than your other sister. So you should only use "younger" when you specifically mention your other sister in comparison.

UhOh! Fresco. There's that transformational grammar again. Although I agree with Chomsky in principle, I always thought his approach was somewhat of a walrus as a bit of unlearning had to occur to geddit.

The point of language is communication. The clearer the better. It doesn't seem like too much trouble to say the younger of my two older sisters. This is clear. It leaves no doubt about what is meant.

Math and language? Apples and oranges.

Re: Pedantry?


What besides reasons of tradition or pedantry would be the reason for irregular verbs?

You can't say pedantry without pedantry. Until we plan a language we will have to use the haphazard evolutions.

Math and language aren't so different, actually. I like Chomsky's ideas in general, though they don't explain certain languages with specific word orders. If the one system doesn't explain it, another will do the trick - once we discover what it is. I think it would be really cool to study other languages mathematically.

There's actually a book that compares phonetics to math, on another point. It's called "Who is Fourier?" and it was written by students in a language school in Japan, I think.

rufio and Roberta

I suspect the "Fourier Reference" refers to the Fourier transforms used in speech spectography where there is a trade-off between pitch and amplitude information (an example of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle) This in turn is concerned with the lack of isomorphism between the acoustic speech signal and the phonetic content.

It seems that human speech recognition (as opposed to machine recognition) makes extensive use of "context" at both the phonological and semantic levels and "context" resists mathematical definition.

So Roberta may be correct with her "apples and oranges" at least until someone comes up with an analysis at the level of "fruit" !

It's not "apples and oranges" though. Math is not a separate study from any science. Math is a way we have of describing patterns. Anything that can be studied through science has some kind of pattern that can be described through math, including language. This book is about phonetics, which have not context, not phonemics. Phonemics are also logical and mathematical, but in a less technical way.