Б. С. Хаймович, Б. И. Роговская теоретическая грамматика английского языка

Adjective Grammemes in Speech

§ 110. An English adjective lexeme may contain three words at most (strong — stronger —-strongest) representing three grammemes. The fourth grammeme contains words with the oblique meaning of the 'positive degree' (deaf, ver­tical, wooden, etc.). There are no oblique meanings of the 'comparative' and the 'superlative' degrees in English, i. e. words like calmer, bravest have always 'positive degree' opposites.

Note. The Latin comparatives major, minor, junior, senior, superior, inferior, etc., though retaining some of their 'compara­tive' meaning, differ from the words of the 'comparative degree' grammeme in not being followed by than and in being often used without real comparison, e. g. a minor injury, goods of inferior work­manship (Hornby).
The 'comparative' connotation is part of the lexical meanings of these words.

§ 111. The table below shows the relative frequency of the occurrence of the four grammemes in some literary texts of the 20th century. We have counted separately the occur­rences of the synthetic and the analytical forms.

Grammeme	Form	Sample	Frequency (per cent)
Positive, actual Positive, oblique Comparative Superlative	synth. analyt. synth. analyt.	short, difficult vertical, blind shorter more difficult shortest most difficult	82.6 8.2 4.6 1.0 1.6 1.6

As usual, the unmarked member of the opposeme, the 'positive degree' grammeme, occurs in speech most frequently.

§ 112. The combinability of the words belonging to the above-mentioned four grammemes is primarily determined by their being adjectives. Yet, each grammeme and even each form of a grammeme has some combinative peculiarities. Apart from the fact that different linking words are used with different grammemes (as long as ..., longer than ... , the longest of ...), the latter show, as it were, some prefer­ence for certain combinative models. This is reflected in the table below, where A stands for adjective, N for noun, P for pronoun, Vl for link-verb, Vn for notional verb.

Grammemes Patterns	'Positive' (both actual and oblique)	'Comparative'		'Superlative'
		Synthet.	Analyt.	Synthet.	Analyt.
A + N	76	40	9.5	93.1	95.3
Vl + A	14	48	81	6.9	-