Adjectives, Comparatives & Superlatives

Following on from the last post discussing Noun Attributes in Pali, we can now look at adjectives specifically, as well as Comparatives & Superlatives.

Adjectives as Attributes

An adjective is a word that describes, or qualifies a noun and describes a quality or characteristic. They are often termed 'describing' words:

•  red, quiet, obedient, cold, new etc.

For instance:

adj		adj		adj		adj		adj
setā	rasmiyo	setā	patodalaṭṭhi	setaṃ	chattaṃ	setaṃ	uṇhīsaṃ	setāni	vatthāni
nom pl fem	nom pl fem	nom sgl fem	nom sgl fem	nom sgl neut	nom sgl neut	nom sgl neut	nom sgl neut	nom pl neut	nom pl neut
white reins		a white driver’s stick		a white parasol		a white turban		white clothes

Actually technically, in the phrase 'the white reins' both 'white' & 'reins' are each nouns, but 'white' is being used as an attributive adjective because it is qualifying another noun, while 'reins' is termed a substantive noun because it represents an actual thing. This is important because in Pali many nouns can function either as substantives or adjectives.

In Pali, adjectives take the same case, gender and number as the substantive nouns they qualify and are usually placed before their substantive. If they come after, this is often for emphasis or there is an implied apposition or copula ‘is’ as we saw in the last post.
Other exception include when:

• there are multiple adjectives to a single noun. In this event, one adjective often precedes while the rest follow the noun. 

Here's a tutorial on Pali adjectives:

Learn Pali Grammar - Adjectives

This tutorial looks at how adjectives operate in Pali and explains the agreement of adjectives with their substantive nouns.

Positives, Comparatives & Superlatives

Many adjectives have three distinct forms:

• the straightforward adjective - traditionally called the positive form;
• comparatives a special form which expresses a sense of ‘more than’ or ‘better than’
• while superlatives mean ‘best of’ or ‘most’.

positive:	tall	sure	clever
comparative:	taller	surer	cleverer
superlative:	tallest	surest	cleverest

English is quite irregular but we can see that:

•  -er is generally added to form comparatives, 
• while -est forms superlatives.

In Pali, the suffixes:

•  –tara, -iya or –īya (sometimes -iyya or -īyya). are generally added to any kind of adjective to form the comparative; 
• while –tama, -iṭṭha or - issika form the superlative.  

It's important to note that theses suffixes are then declined to agree with the substantives they qualify.

Comparatives

A feature of comparative constructions is the noun to which the comparison is made will be in Instrumental or Ablative case; (where English uses the word ‘than’).

dhanena	seyyo
ins	nom
n	m
sgl	sgl
wealth, riches	better
better (than) wealth

koci-añño		attanā	piyataro
	nom	abl	nom
	m	m	m
	sgl	sgl	sgl
whoever-else		oneself	(more) dear
whoever else (is) more dear (than) oneself?

A more complex example,

adj				adj		Comp adj
mānusakehi	kho	āvuso,	kāmehi	dibbā	kāmā	abhikkantatarā
Instr, abl	indec	voc	instr, abl	nom, abl	nom,abl	nom,abl
m		m	m	m	m	m
pl		pl	pl	pl, sgl	pl,sgl	pl,sgl
human	indeed	friend	desires	divine	desires	more brilliant
Indeed friend, divine desire/s, (are) more brilliant (than) human desires

If you look up each word in this example there are lots of variant declensions – more than I’ve listed – and so we need to thin them out. First of all, kho is an enclitic and thus can’t begin a sentence and this is true of anything in vocative too - so these can be moved to the start. The only nouns in the rest of sentence are both masculine and as adjectives must agree with their nouns we can use this to cut down the variants. So mānusakehi must be instrumental or ablative plural and dibbā must be either nominative plural or ablative sgl. Now we can see that mānusakehi agrees with kāmehi therefore ‘human desires’ and dibbā agrees with kāmā - and with Abhikkantatarā too. Which means this is the the thing compared; ‘divine desire/s’ are ‘more brilliant’.  And we know that the noun to which the comparison is made is in instrumental / ablative so ‘more brilliant’ than ‘human desires’ .
Finally this leaves choosing whether ‘divine desire/s’ is singular or plural. I would say that as there is an implied ‘is’ linking the two halves of the comparison and ‘human desires’ is definitely plural so this would force dibbā kāmā to be plural also. And this will cast the whole thing into nominative making it the subject. A bit long winded I know but hey...

Comparisons may also be expressed simply by an Ablative followed by an adjective!

Superlatives

With superlatives the compared noun generally will be in either Genitive or Locative plural; (where English uses the word ‘of’).

khattiyo	jane	seṭṭho
nom	loc	nom
m	m	m
sgl	pl	sgl
a warrior	person(s)	foremost
the warrior (is) foremost (amongst) people

virāgo	seṭṭho	dhammānaṃ
nom	nom	gen/dat
m	m	m
sgl	sgl	pl
dispassion	foremost	dhammas
Dispassion (is) the foremost (of) the dhammas

Beware  pronominal forms of 'Ka': katara ‘which one?’ and katama ‘which?, which one?’. They look like comparatives but are not!..

Other words used Adjectively

Though Pali has words which are specifically adjective in meaning, it doesn't really distinguish between nouns and adjective.

Adjectives from Nouns

Any noun stem can be turned into an adjective by use of suffixes:

-vant, -vat before nouns stems in a/ā,
-(v)in also to stems in a,
-mant, -mat to the other stem endings

Nouns stems ending in the above often have a meaning of possession and can be rendered in English  by -ed. (possessing wings = winged)

Others adjective suffixes include:

-āla
-ālu
-ava
-ita
-ila

They then decline like past active participles in –ant, –va, –ma or –(v)in; This means that although they must match their qualified noun in case, gender and number, they may not be identical in form. Note: some dictionaries drop the final 'n' of –(v)in.

Adjectives from Verbs

Verbs can also take the suffix -in (and be declined like participles) which can be rendered in English by -ing. For instance flying, falling etc. These are similar to present participles and tend to act as adjectives: a flying kite, falling rock etc.

For more details see my post Pali Adjectival Suffixes.

Adjectives functioning as Substantives

Any adjective may also stand alone and act as a substantive noun (where there is no other substantive), in which case they are always in neuter.
It is also possible to make an adjective into an adverb (easy -> easily) by placing it in the neuter accusative singular:

Some examples of the above:

noun	poss. adj.	subsatntive
dhana	dhani(n)
wealth	wealthy	the wealthy
pakkha	pakkhi(n)
wing	winged	a bird
hattha	hatthi(n)
hand	handed	an elephant
bhaga	bhagavant
fortune	fortunate	the blessed
saññā	saññi(n)
perception	conscious	sentient being
verb	adjective	subsatntive
kara	kari(n)
to do	making	maker
dadā	dadi(n)
to give	giving	giver

Numerals

I include numerals here as they are often used adjectivally - 'the three men' etc. The way numerals behave in Pali is unusually varied. For instance:

• Numerals 1, 3 & 4 act like adjectives and decline in number, gender and case agreeing with their nouns.

• However, 2 & 5 through 18 are always plural and without gender distinction, but still change to reflect the case of their nouns.

• Numbers 1-18 behave adjectivally - while 19 and above act in apposition to their nouns thus generally taking the same case as the noun they qualify but are either feminine or neuter in gender and always singular!

See also compounds and participles for more info...


Next post: Getting possessive; how Pali expresses 'having' by the Genitive case.