Re[2]: [tied] Fwd: question re English grammar

At 4:32:25 on Friday, 18 February 2005, fortuna11111 wrote:

>>>> She speaks loud (or do you say loudly? Sprachgefühl
>>>> says to me: loud)

>> I say <loudly> and find <loud> questionable,

[...]

>> but in fact <loud> has been an adverb as well as an
>> adjective for a long time, and the comparative and
>> superlative survive even for those of us who no longer
>> use <loud> as an adverb.

> This is new to me. I am not very well acquainted with
> historical English grammar (I mean Piotr's comments here
> as well). Do you mean, however, that standard English
> grammar still considers those both adverbs and adjectives?

Yes, though different speakers may disagree on which ones
are still usable as adverbs. Some, like 'high', 'low',
'fast', and 'hard', are the normal adverbs for everyone.
Others are common but have to some extent been displaced by
<-ly> forms, 'slow' being a good example: although 'go slow'
is very common, many speakers have a strong preference for
'go slowly'. I think that 'loud' may have progressed even
further along that scale.

> Do you mean that you would say "loudly" in the positive,
> but still "louder" and "the loudest" in the comparative
> and superlative degrees?

Yes. 'I yelled loudly', but 'She yelled louder than I did'.
(If I needed both in the same sentence, however, I might use
'loudly' and 'more loudly'.)

[...]

>>>> She jumped higher than him.
>>>> She ran slower than him. (Slowlier, huh?)

>> <High> and <slow> are adverbs as well as adjectives, so
>> there's no problem here. (Actually, many prefer <slowly>
>> to adverbial <slow>, but the old comparative and
>> superlative are standard.)

> Where do I find a list or a summary of such adjectives
> which have preserved their use as adverbs in modern
> English grammar?

I can't really help you much there, I'm afraid, but I expect
that Piotr's references would be a good starting point.

Brian