Elative adjectives in Dutch, English, and Czech
Elative adjectives in Dutch, English, and Czech

Summary/Abstract: This article examines a proposed lexical-semantic category of elative adjectives, which express a high degree of a given property in the positive (i.e. non-comparative and non-superlative) form. The term elative is adopted from Hoeksema’s (2012) study of elative compound adjectives in Dutch (e.g. pijlsnel ‘arrow-fast’). Building on his Dutch data and drawing on an original survey of English and Czech, the article provides an inventory of elative adjectives in the three languages. Elative adjectives fall into two basic structural types: compounds and derivatives (both prefixal and suffixal). Their degree interpretation is motivated either by a conventionalised comparison (simile; ‘as fast as an arrow’) or by the presence of an intensifying affix(oid) (e.g. Dutch oer-sterk ‘ultrastrong’, English over-critical, Czech pře-krásný ‘superbeautiful’; maxi-, hyper-, mega-). The conclusion summarises the survey find ings and offers tentative arguments for recognising this adjectival subset. This is not to suggest that elatives are necessarily widespread across languages, much less universal; however, their attestation in several languages makes them a promising target for further comparative research.

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