Shouldn't adjectives be equivalent to complex numbers, with both an argument and magnitude? Although, if you consider "terribly amazing" and "amazingly terrible", this suggests that adjective composition is *not* commutative, so Hamiltonian quaternions might be a better representation. Can someone check the associativity property, to see whether we need to move to octonions? Anyway, an intensifier would be equal to a scalar (I imagine). Words such as 'extremely' would be larger than unity; those such as 'slightly' would be smaller. 'Infinitely' would have a value of ∞, and 'infinitesimally' would have a value of 1/∞. These are adverbs, by the way, but are effectively adjectives that have been modified to enable composition with other adjectives. Sincerely, Adam P. Goucher [Julian: well done on optimising my p94, by the way.] ----- Original Message ----- From: "Julian Ziegler Hunts" <julianj.zh@gmail.com> To: <billgosper@gmail.com> Cc: <math-fun@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Sunday, December 19, 2010 10:50 PM Subject: Re: [math-fun] Signed adjectives
positive, comparative, and superlative
Examples? Good, better, best? And for 0, -1, -2, and -∞, would it be pink, bad, worse, and worst? Isn't superlative a term for any "most extreme" thing, meaning that -∞ also corresponds to superlative? Also, why does comparative correspond to 2? Only reason I can think of is if their functions are essentially multiplicative, in which case we have descriptive (1), comparative (positive, real, ≠1), and superlative (0, ∞).
On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 2:41 PM, Bill Gosper <billgosper@gmail.com> wrote:
Most(?) human languages have positive, comparative, and superlative, corresponding to 1, 2, and infinity. But we clearly need forms for 0, -1, -2, and -infinity. (Provisionally: inoperative, depreciative, pejorative, and besmirchative.) Also adverbial forms. Tongue-in-cheeklier, --rwg
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