Logos

OPERATIONopr.eng.inflectional-comparison

inflectional comparison

The suffix that raises a short word one or two grades, and the route grading takes whenever the base is short enough to carry it.

English has two grades above the plain form, and this rule states the inflectional route to both: one suffix for the step that measures a term against another term, a second for the step that measures it against a set. The rule is stated once over the shape of the base rather than once per word, because the base is what decides it. Length is the condition, and it is phonological and lexical rather than semantic: a word of one syllable takes the suffixes, a word of three or more refuses them, and the two syllable band divides by ending and by frequency, with some words admitting both routes and a few admitting neither comfortably. That is why the coverage here is one band of three and not a fraction of a word list.

Two things the rule does not do are worth saying plainly. It does not decide gradability, which is stored on the word: a word that names an absolute refuses both routes and nothing here computes which words those are. And it does not compete with the analytic route for the same base. Applying the suffix to a long base is ungrammatical rather than merely unusual, and stacking suffix and preceding word together is ungrammatical in the standard variety, though it was ordinary at earlier stages of the language. The two series divide the field between them; they do not overlap on it.

statusstatus
documentedasserted, and the sources agree
provenanceprovenance
authoredwritten for Logos, from first principles
derivation statusderivation_status
unstatednobody has said whether it follows from anything
saliencesalience
No salience. Where no frequency source applies the object carries none, rather than a default or a guess (03-schema.md §3.5).
aliasesaliases
None recorded.
sourcessources
An empty list, which is an assertion: this rests on nothing external, and somebody checked. It is not the same as nobody having looked.

What it does, and when it fires

operation.rule

The domain it works in, and the firing condition as a sentence. The checkable form of that condition is the selects group below.

domaindomain
morphologicalit changes the shape of words
triggertrigger

A gradable adjective or adverb is graded and its base is short enough to carry the suffix rather than hand the work to a preceding word: one syllable always, two syllables under a condition of ending and frequency, three or more never.

How much it covers

operation.coverage

How many cases the operation actually derives, out of how many it claims, and how that was counted.

derives 1 of 3enumerated

The band of three syllables and more, which the suffix never reaches and which a preceding word serves instead, and the band of two syllables, which divides by ending and by frequency rather than by anything this rule states. Only the band of one syllable is derived outright. The analytic series that serves the residue is named here and is not yet carved as an object in this graph, which is a gap in the content rather than a claim that no such rule exists.

every case was counted

Everything joined to this object

One group per typed edge, in both directions. A1b guarantees no object node is an orphan, so this is the whole navigation: an object with no edges would have failed the build rather than reached this page.

What this object is a kind of

Walking this object's own `is-a` edges: what it is a kind of. Several branches from one object are several classification axes, not competing supertypes.

objects
1
places drawn
1
multi-parent
None in this view. This subgraph happens to be a tree, which the explorer draws as one without assuming it is one.

Siblings are listed by name, then by id to break ties. That is a display choice made here and not an order the graph asserts.

Fan-out per dimension

A4

One row per dimension, largest first. That is a display order, not a verdict: 03-schema.md declares no threshold above which fan-out is too much, so this reports the count and grades nothing.

  • case13 values
  • mood8 values
  • voice8 values
  • aspect7 values
  • aktionsart6 values
  • number6 values
  • person6 values
  • tense6 values
  • comparison4 values
  • evidentiality4 values
  • gender4 values
  • politeness4 values
  • valency4 values
  • animacy3 values
  • definiteness3 values
  • deixis3 values
  • finiteness2 values
  • information structure2 values
  • interrogativity2 values
  • polarity2 values
  • switch-reference2 values

What kinds of this object there are

Walking the `is-a` edges that point at this object: what kinds of it there are. An object reachable two ways is drawn in both places and is still one object.

objects
1
places drawn
1
multi-parent
None in this view. This subgraph happens to be a tree, which the explorer draws as one without assuming it is one.

Siblings are listed by name, then by id to break ties. That is a display choice made here and not an order the graph asserts.

has-a

edges.has-a

the parent carries this

this object carries

becomes

edges.becomes

the parent converts into this

this object converts into

applies-to

edges.applies-to

the operation's input

this operation applies to

  • LEXEMEtalllex.eng.tallno page in v1documented

    This edge type carries no payload. The assertion is the edge itself.

overrides

edges.overrides

declared arbitrariness (A7)

these objects override this one

  • OPERATIONsuppletive comparisonopr.eng.suppletive-comparisondocumented
    • reasonA replaced base leaves the suffix nothing to attach to, so in the graded steps this rule serves, suffixation has no input and does not fire. The two cannot both apply to one step, and the replacement wins, because once it has applied there is no base left for the suffix to read.