On 19 November 2010 16:26, Luke Bergen
<lukeabergen@gmail.com> wrote:
We keep coming back to this point and I can't decide which side of the fence I lean towards.
I read tanru as X type-of Y. So a {barda gerku} I read as a dog which is of type "big" -> a big dog.
But there are some that seem funny. For instance, if I am "the most correct" am I fundamentally "superlative" or fundamentally "correct"? In other words, am I "the most (type-of) correct" or am I "correct (type-of) the most"?
The dog is fundamentally a dog, but he is also big. "big" and "dogness" are both attributes that he possesses. How do we determine that his fundamental essence is "dogness" and not "bigness" though? If we could quantify that I would be much happier being firmly planted on one side of the fence or the other.
In "the most correct", "the most" explains how "correct" you are, not the other way 'round. Therefore what's essential there is correctness, not superlativeness (although in this example it makes little sense because you can't be more and less correct, you can be correct or not correct, but let's play along). Which of these is more essential is rather simple to test - leave one of the two out and see which version is closer to the meaning of the original sentence. In this example:
"I am the most correct."
1) "I am the most."
2) "I am correct."
2 is closer in meaning to the original than 1 (plus 1 doesn't really make sense), therefore "correct" is more essential than "the most".