Talk:comparative

Pronunciation

@Mahagaja: Hello. Is Neskaya's pronunciation (/ˈkɒm.p(ə.)ɹə.tɪv/?) a nonstandard one?

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--Per utramque cavernam 21:08, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

I've never heard it before. Tharthan (talk) 22:08, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

I've uploaded the pronunciation that I am familiar with. I have not removed the other pronunciation because I am unsure whether it is actually used or not. Like I said, I have never heard it. Tharthan (talk) 22:27, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

@Tharthan: Thanks again! --Per utramque cavernam 10:54, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

I've never heard it either. And Tharthan, the MMM merger is part of what defines General American. Any accent that distinguishes two or all three of them isn't General American. —Mahāgaja (formerly Angr) · talk 19:20, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

I've replaced the sound file with a new one of myself saying /kəmˈpɛɹətɪv/ but it may be a while before everything's updated so that's the pronunciation we hear. At the moment, I'm still hearing Neskaya saying /ˈkɑmpəɹətɪv/. —Mahāgaja (formerly Angr) · talk 19:33, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

If General American were as rigid as you claimed (it isn't), then both the wine-whine distinction and the cot-caught merger wouldn't be accepted in General American either. The wine-whine distinction is used by relatively few American speakers these days compared to past times, and is largely going away. On the other hand, the cot-caught merger is used by increasingly larger numbers of people, and may in fact become standard at a relatively near point in the future (unfortunately). But, even though General American has a standard set of sounds generally speaking, it allows for both of those. I maintain that, in the continuum that is General American, the Mary-marry-merry distinction is permitted, unless you are actually going to claim to me that all of the people (news anchors, show hosts, business people, officials, etc.) who otherwise possess every other feature of General American, but possess the Mary-marry-merry distinction, are not speaking a form of General American. Tharthan (talk) 20:19, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

Look at our discussion on your user talk page from February/March 2016: according to John C. Wells, who knows much better than either of us, "GenAm merges the following vowels before /ɹ/: near/spirit; fairy/ferry/marry; bar/sorry; war/bore/orange; you're/poor; current/furry". The wine/whine and cot/caught mergers are not part of the definition of GenAm, but the MMM merger is. Lack of the MMM merger in a given accent proves that that accent is not part of the GenAm cluster. —Mahāgaja (formerly Angr) · talk 20:54, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

If you recall the discussion (unless I am recalling it incorrectly) I wasn't the only one questioning your claim on this. You could never definitively prove that I was wrong about this, even with your citation. What I do gather from our discussions, though, is that you are completely biased against "Eastern features" and think yourself better and more proper than those who have them, simply because a lot of people share some form of your dialect. That is akin to dialectal imperialism, which is sick in my opinion.

By the way, I've met plenty of people from Philadelphia who do not have the Mary-marry-merry merger. Tharthan (talk) 21:09, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

Quotations

Need more/better quotations for definition, "Of or relating to comparison." —DIV (1.129.109.37 07:52, 1 June 2019 (UTC))

preferable: comparative (adjective)

Sometimes the double comparative form more preferable is used. The word more is of course unnecessary, since preferablemeans ‘more desirable (than)’. Like other comparatives, it is therefore intensified by far, much, infinitely, etc.

Preferable, inherently a comparative adjective, shouldn’t be preceded by more  

--Backinstadiums (talk) 16:13, 21 July 2021 (UTC)