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The adverbial form hyvin of the adjective hyvä, good, becomes paremmin, meaning in a better way. The complement of the comparative can be indicated in two ways: if it is a nominal group, it can be put in the partitive case in front of the adjective or adverb in the comparative. Tämä talo on tuota isompi. This house is bigger than that one.
For example, hot has the comparative form hotter and the superlative form hottest. Typically, short adjectives (including most single-syllable adjectives that are semantically gradable), adjectives originating in Old English, and short adjectives borrowed from French use the -er and -est suffixes.
The syntax of comparative constructions is poorly understood due to the complexity of the data. In particular, the comparative frequently occurs with independent mechanisms of syntax such as coordination and forms of ellipsis (gapping, pseudogapping, null complement anaphora, stripping, verb phrase ellipsis). The interaction of the various ...
Many adjectives, however, particularly those that are longer and less common, do not have inflected comparative and superlative forms. Instead, they can be qualified with more and most , as in beautiful, more beautiful, most beautiful (this construction is also sometimes used even for adjectives for which inflected forms do exist).
As in English, adjectives have superlative and comparative forms. For regular first and second declension and third declension adjectives with one or two endings, the comparative is formed by adding -ior for the masculine and feminine, and -ius for the neuter to the stem. The genitives for both are formed by adding -iōris.
The degree determiners much/many, little/few, and their comparative and superlative forms more, most, less/fewer, least/fewest all express quantification. Where two forms are given, the first is used with non-count nouns and the second with count nouns (although in colloquial English less and least are frequently also used with count nouns).
The distinction between inflected and periphrastic forms is usually illustrated across distinct languages. However, comparative and superlative forms of adjectives (and adverbs) in English provide a straightforward illustration of the phenomenon. [7] For many speakers, both the simple and periphrastic forms in the following table are possible:
Human language has evolved to suit this practice by facilitating grammatical comparison, with comparative forms enabling a person to describe a thing as having more or less of a characteristic than another thing, or to describe a thing in a group as having the most or least of that characteristic relative to the group.