comma/more superior

@Setanta,

Just off the top of my head: Embedded in the definition of 'superior' is the notion of 'better than the other(s)' in one or another respect. Depending on the context, it could include 'best among all'.

When 'superior' is preceeded by the definite article, we get, for example, 'the superior team', which is clearly superlative. Just substitute a more well-known superlative like 'best'. If there is no meaning lost, its equivalent and thus, a superlative.

Without the definite article, we have 'Vietnam's team is superior to', which is comparative just as saying 'VN's team is better than'. Substituting a more well-recognized comparative results in no loss of meaning, thus they are equivalent comparatives.

Seems to me that context is crucial. A lot of people want a black-or-white, absolute answer, and language often doesn't work that way. It's not like a programming language where each term has only one clearly-defined function. (I know jack about programming, btw.)

Anyway, that's the way I'd explain it to my students. I admit that I haven't done any research on it, so I'm open to correction by someone who has.

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Well, i explained why i hesitate to change what ESL students have written, as long as it is not grammatically incorrect. And, i am tolerably certain that i have shown that there can be degrees of "superiorness." Although superior can be and probably most often is used as a superlative, it is not axiomatic that it is "the" superlative in all usages.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

Well, i explained why i hesitate to change what ESL students have written, as long as it is not grammatically incorrect.

And I agreed, didn't I? If not, I meant to.

Quote:

And, i am tolerably certain that i have shown that there can be degrees of "superiorness."

The way I'm reading this, we initially agreed. You did write, "That is not true of the word superior, which does not come equipped with a comparative and a superlative form."?

Quote:

Although superior can be and probably most often is used as a superlative, it is not axiomatic that it is "the" superlative in all usages.

Right. Thus my emphasis on context and pointed to the presence or absence of defininte (the) and indefinite (a, an) articles to help ascertain the context.
The context tells us whether it was meant to be comparative or superlative, or, for that matter, a noun.

Setanta, I think we are actually agreeing. Maybe the words are just getting in the way?

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@FBM,

I haven't said that we don't agree. I am just attempting to make my expression more superior.

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@Setanta,

Between us, we have a most better agreement on the least superior of the more trivialest grammatical points. I'm going to get a more betterest beer now. My head hurts.

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JTT says: Your particular dialect isn't the only one in existence, Punkey.

Please explain.

Isn't this about a team? Team was; teams were.

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@FBM,

Quote:

When 'superior' is preceeded by the definite article, we get, for example, 'the superior team', which is clearly superlative.

Not by its lonesome, it ain't.

A: What about the Yankees and the Red Sox?

B: The Red Sox are the superior team.

Context context context and then context.

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@McTag,

Quote:

Yes. Certainly the last three.

And why not the first three? And why the last three?

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@Setanta,

Quote:

Superior in and of it self is neither a comparative nor a superlative. Although you and i would probably never wander into that minefield, there is nothing in the language which would prohibit one from imagining and employing a comparative and a superlative of a word like superior.

I'm almost convinced.

More superior? Most inferior?

I still don't like it. I think you colonials are too lax.

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@JTT,

Quote:

And why the last three?

which were

Quote:

"more fitter", "more corrupter" and "most poorest"?

Now you've had a chance to mull this over, you probably don't need me to point out to you that these examples are ungrammatical.

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@McTag,

In the first place, i am not, nor have i ever been, a citizen of a colony. Now that we've gotten that out of the way, yes, i could imagine "most inferior." As in: "These knock-off watches from Thailand are inferior to the brands they mimick, but the Chinese knock-offs are the most inferior." My only point is that superior is not automatically either a comparative or a superlative, and if you wish, we can add inferior to the list.

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@Setanta,

My copy of Fowler's English Usage has "most superior", but only apparently in the sense of "very superior". Nevertheless it appears to be permissible in certain circumstances. I bow to you, sir.

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@McTag,

Ah, Queen's English?

Consider the differences in:

'That was a most superior slice of halibut.' (acceptable)

and

'That slice of halibut was the most superior one I've ever tasted.' (unacceptable)

Speaking of which, the EFL 'industry' has largely shunned the black-and-white labels 'right' and 'wrong' in favor of degrees of acceptableness.

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@FBM,

Acceptableness ? ! ? ! ? Is that acceptable to the "EFL industry?" What ever happened to acceptability?

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@Setanta,

Quote:

Acceptableness ? ! ? ! ? Is that acceptable to the "EFL industry?" What ever happened to acceptability?

A fine example of just how common is the narrowness of thought when it comes to language.

=====================
Webster's 1828 Dictionary
acceptableness

ACCEPT'ABLENESS, n. the quality of being agreeable to a ACCEPTABIL'ITY, receiver, or to a person with whom one has intercourse. [The latter word is little used, or not at all.]

http://1828.mshaffer.com/d/word/acceptableness

===========================

'acceptableness' is also found in M-W the modern version.

++++++++++++++++++

Definition of ACCEPTABLE

1
: capable or worthy of being accepted <no compromise would be acceptable>
2
a : welcome, pleasing <compliments are always acceptable>
b : barely satisfactory or adequate <performances varied from excellent to acceptable>
— ac·cept·abil·i·ty noun
— ac·cept·able·ness noun
— ac·cept·ably adverb

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/acceptableness?show=0&t=1292348439

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Will there now be a tirade from Set in an attempt to obscure the issue he has raised or will we see his apology? Something tells me that the chance for either is not a 50-50 split.

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@McTag,

"more fitter", "more corrupter" and "most poorest"?

Quote:

Now you've had a chance to mull this over, you probably don't need me to point out to you that these examples are ungrammatical.

What makes them ungrammatical, McTag?

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@McTag,

Quote:

My copy of Fowler's English Usage

"[T]he prattlings of [one of the] landscape gardeners who hope by frantic efforts to keep Alaska from bumping into Asia."

Quote:

Take Modern English Usage, by that good man H. W. Fowler, "a Christian in all but actual faith," as the Dictionary of National Biography called him. Despite a revision in 1965, it is out-of-date, yet it still has a coterie as devoted as the fans of Jane Austen or Max Beerbohm, who prize its diffident irony, its prose cadences, and, above all, the respect it shows for its readers' intelligence and principles. Here, for example, is Fowler on the insertion of quotation marks or an expression like "to use an expressive colloquialism" to mark off a slang word from which the writer wants to dissociate himself:

Surprise a person of the class that is supposed to keep servants cleaning his own boots, & either he will go on with the job while he talks to you, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, or else he will explain that the bootboy or scullery-maid is ill & give you to understand that he is, despite appearances, superior to boot-cleaning. If he takes the second course, you conclude that he is not superior to it; if the first, that perhaps he is. So it is with the various apologies to which recourse is had by writers who wish to safeguard their dignity & yet be vivacious, to combine comfort with elegance, to touch pitch & not be defiled. . . . Some writers use a slang phrase because it suits them, & box the ears of people in general because it is slang; a refinement on the institution of whipping-boys, by which they not only have the boy, but do the whipping.

This passage would not be out of place in the company of Addison and Steele. It is apt, amusing, and above all instructive. It obviously has done little to stem the mania for quotation marks (WE ARE "CLOSED," I saw in the window of a shoe-repair shop the other day), but it did at least persuade me to remove the quotes from around the word life-style in a review I was writing, and I am a better person for it.

http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/97mar/halpern/nunberg.htm

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

Acceptableness ? ! ? ! ? Is that acceptable to the "EFL industry?" What ever happened to acceptability?

I really should move back to an English-speaking country. I'm losing the ability to speak my native tongue. This is just one example. My friends have pointed out others. I so rarely speak to other native speakers that I
sometimes draw a blank in the middle of a

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/acceptableness

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@FBM,

By George, he's got it.

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@JTT,

That quotation from Fowler, far from finding anything wrong with it, seem to confirm the author's fondness for it and indeed its usefulness, quaint though many of its passage may seem to those more used to the turbulent and transient fads and usages of AmE.

1 Reply

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