komparative

The term komparative refers to the comparative degree of adjectives and adverbs in linguistics. It is a grammatical form or construction used to indicate that one entity has a higher or lower degree of a property than another. The comparative sits between the positive (base) form and the superlative in the traditional three-grade system: positive, comparative, and superlative.

Forms and realization vary across languages. In English, short, mono‑syllabic adjectives often form the comparative with a suffix -er (tall → taller, fast → faster), while longer adjectives use the periphrastic more (beautiful → more beautiful). English also exhibits irregular comparatives (good → better, bad → worse). Other languages have different patterns: German typically adds -er and often uses umlaut changes (groß → größer) and Dutch uses -er as well; Romance languages frequently employ periphrastic expressions such as más/menos in Spanish or más grande in column with nouns. Some languages rely on analytic phrases or fixed words to express comparison rather than inflection.

Syntax and usage are similar across languages in essential respects. The comparative is usually introduced with a comparison marker such as than (as in bigger than) or with an equality construction like as...as for comparisons of equality. It attaches to adjectives or adverbs, and can modify the phrase that expresses the property being compared. The comparative works together with the positive and superlative to express a full scale of degrees.

In linguistic study, the comparative degree is part of the broader system of degree words, including the superlative. It is subject to morphophonemic changes, irregular forms, and language-specific syntactic rules, reflecting how different languages encode relative properties.