Timeline for Is "horrorest" a correct English word?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
13 events
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| Apr 16, 2015 at 14:29 | comment | added | Rushyo | @O.R.Mapper Actually, I agree you may well be correct there. I think I was thinking too much in the context of the original post. | |
| Apr 16, 2015 at 14:14 | comment | added | O. R. Mapper | @Rushyo: So, what's the point? Whether it's a "more technical text" or a "text of a more technical nature", "more technical" is the comparative form of the adjective "technical", which is thus getting graded. (Also, I'm not sure I find the short-hand explanation convincing; you could claim something like that about virtually every adjective. "Tasty food"? No, it's "food of tasty nature". A "beautiful photo"? No, it's a "photo of beautiful nature".) | |
| Apr 16, 2015 at 11:46 | comment | added | Lucky | About the dilemma whether adjectives can be categorised as 'gradable' and 'non-gradable' - grammars (e.g. LEG, or British Council website) claim that they can. One can agree or disagree with specific examples, but English is not the only language to distingush between gradable and non-gradable adjectives. | |
| Apr 16, 2015 at 10:53 | comment | added | Steve Jessop | @Rushyo: specifically, "more" refers to the extent to which the issue belongs in the category "medical issue" or "social issue". Another way to express the same thing would be, "this one had more aspects relating to society, and that one had more aspects relating to medicine". So we're using "more medical" to mean, "medical to a greater degree". This seems a lot like grading ;-) But I think it's a general rule when the degree to which something belongs in a category is variable (Daniel's example), or the degree to which something is characteristic of a style is variable (OR's) | |
| Apr 16, 2015 at 10:26 | comment | added | Rushyo | 'More technical' is short-hand for 'of a more technical nature'. Same for scientific. They are probably too widely used nowadays to be considered mere jargon, but that's their etymology. I would hesitate to treat it as a general rule of grammar to be applied generically. | |
| Apr 16, 2015 at 10:15 | comment | added | O. R. Mapper | @Rushyo: True - though more medical might (?) make sense when it refers to the focus of a text. A text intended to be read by doctors would be "more medical" than a text intended for a general audience, wouldn't it? (At least, I have come across such usage with the similar words "technical", "scientific", etc.). | |
| Apr 16, 2015 at 10:01 | comment | added | Rushyo | @DanielLawson In that instance, 'more' refers to the issue (it is implied you are referring to the compound noun 'medical issue') not the word medical alone. Thus, it is more of an issue (of the type medical), and it is not more of a medical (as describes that issue). The long form equivalent of what you wrote is "This one was more a social issue, and that one was more of a medical issue." | |
| Apr 16, 2015 at 3:21 | comment | added | sumelic | Because of this, adjectives can't be usefully divided into absolute categories of "gradable" and "ungradable": it's a function of how they are used, and can vary depending on the context. | |
| Apr 16, 2015 at 3:20 | comment | added | sumelic | Almost all actual adjectives are morphologically capable of being graded; calling some of them "ungradable" seems like it's simply a short way of saying that it normally wouldn't make sense to use the graded forms. On the other hand, noun adjuncts cannot morphologically be put into this form, even in cases where it might express a useful idea as in the OP's example. | |
| Apr 16, 2015 at 1:46 | comment | added | Daniel Lawson | More medical makes sense, in the context of "there were two public health issues. This one was more social, and that one was more medical." | |
| Apr 15, 2015 at 17:12 | comment | added | Lucky | Horror is defined as an adjective (one of the definitions) in regular MW, not just learner's version. I think that 'deader' and 'deadest' are used only as a figure of speech, you're either dead or you're not, which makes it non-gradable. Still it is an interesting observation that non-gradable adjectives can be used in comparative/superlative forms for stylistic purposes. | |
| Apr 15, 2015 at 16:56 | comment | added | Nathan Tuggy | It is sometimes useful, if only hypothetically, to mention how much "deader" someone or something is. Similarly, it is even possible to express that something is the "deadest" you've ever seen. "Dead", then, seems to be gradable. ("Medical" isn't.) I suspect the Learner's Dictionary here may be taking a shortcut to avoid explaining compound nouns. | |
| Apr 15, 2015 at 15:39 | history | answered | Lucky | CC BY-SA 3.0 |