Another observation: participles *loving*, *winning*, and *losing *have
superlatives but not comparatives: The Canandian women's ice hockey team was
the winningest in the Olympics, even winninger than the Americans.

Dick


On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 3:32 AM, Webmail bdespain <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> Just some more observations.
>
> There is a certain phonetic similarity about the two-syllable words that
> attract the -est suffix:  they seem to end in an unstressed vowel or
> sonnant, *e.g.,* *able, clever, common, feeble, gentle, narrow, shallow,
> simple.*  Some single-syllables that end in *-ng* make the *g* hard, *e.g.,
> long (longest), strong (strongest).*  The fact that the adjective forming
> *-ing* does not seem to do this suggests a separate allophone or
> morphophonemic rule.  Also the -*y* adjectives that attract -*est *can
> often have another syllable added to the front, as, *unhappiest, untidiest
> *.  This does not seem to be the same for *loving* or *winning*: *"the
> unlovingest disciple", ?"the unwinningest team this season."
>
> Bruce
>

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