COMPARATIVE FORMATION IN ENGLISH MONOSYLLABIC ADJECTIVES

Abstract

The system of comparative and superlative formation in English relies on both synthetic (i.e., inflectional) and analytic (i.e., periphrastic) means. Numerous studies have analyzed how a wide repertoire of linguistic and extra-linguistic factors impacts the choice of a comparison strategy (e.g. Leech, Culpeper 1997; Lindquist 2000; Mondorf 2009; Gonzalez-Diaz 2009). However, with a few exceptions, they focus solely on disyllabic adjectives that manifest more diversity in terms of the preferred comparison strategy. Since monosyllabic adjectives are considered more stable, they have been rarely subjected to such studies (e.g. Smeds 2007). This paper aims to revisit comparative formation strategies in monosyllabic adjectives and does so by analyzing the prevalence of both comparison strategies in 192 different lexemes. Drawing on techniques familiar from quantitative morphological typology (Greenberg 1960; Szmrecsanyi 2012, 2016), the analysis uses syntheticity and analyticity indices as the main indicators of frequency of both free (more) and bound (-er) comparative morphemes. The quantitative data are retrieved from the Corpus of Contemporary American English. The results will demonstrate that monosyllabic adjectives are not a uniform class. The attributed feature of being inclined toward synthetic comparison does not apply to all members of this class, or at least not to the expected level.