Thursday, July 18, 2013

Detail #47: A superlative construction

Use either all or every (if your language distinguishes them), in dative or comparable form as a particle, with a regular adjective. Works well if your language does comparisons using dative (or comparable), but could also work if that is not the usual construction, as this may be a fossilized form.

E.g. "Mount Everest is the tallest mountain" -> Mount Everest is a tall mountain to everyone
This car is the cheapest -> this car is cheap to all
The sharpest knife is not sharp enough -> to everyone the sharp knife is not sharp enough/?the sharpest knife is not sharp to anyone

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