 in linguistics, the comparative is a syntactic construction that serves to express a comparison between two (or more) entities or groups of entities in quality, quantity, or degree; it is one of the degrees of comparison, alongside the positive and the superlative.a comprehensive analysis and discussion of the comparative is produced by huddleston and pullum (2002:1099-1170). the comparative is signaled in english by the suffix -er or by a word of comparison (as, more, less) and the conjunction- or preposition-like word as or than. the comparative is frequently associated with adjectives and adverbs because these words take the -er suffix or modifying word more or less (e.g., faster, more intelligent, less wasteful); it can also, however, appear when no adjective or adverb is present, for instance with nouns (e.g., more men than women). 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 mechanisms complicates the analysis. most if not all languages have some means of forming the comparative, although these means can vary significantly from one language to the next. ==examples== the comparative in english is generally expressed by a combination of two elements/words, by a focusing element (-er, more, less, as) and a second word introducing the second part of the comparison (as or than). as described in the following section, the suffix -er is used with many adjectives, particularly monosyllabic ones (and some adverbs), and more is used with all other words (other adjectives and adverbs, nouns). the particular suffixes/words that express the comparative are in bold in the following examples: ::a. she is smarter than him. ::b. she is more intelligent than him. ::c. your music is nicer than my music. ::d. your music is more pleasant than my music. ::e. sam helps less often than susan does. ::f. he laughs more than you do. ::g. more boys wanted to play than girls. ::h. andrew is as annoying as he is useless. the entities compared by the comparative can be almost anything, e.g., people, places, things, actions, abstract notions, traits, etc. the entities are compared with respect to a property that they each have (or lack), e.g., the property of being nice, the property of occurring often, the property of wanting to play, etc. ==-er vs. more== as just mentioned, monosyllabic adjectives generally form their comparative form with -er in engl
Grammar