Elative (gradation)

In Semitic linguistics, the elative is a stage of gradation in Arabic that can be used both for a superlative and comparative. The Arabic elative has a special inflection similar to that of colour and defect adjectives, though differing in the details. To form an elative, the consonants of the adjective's root are placed in the context ʾaCCaC (or ʾaCaCC if the second and third consonants are the same), which, generally speaking, in most situations inflects for case but not for gender or number. Furthermore, elatives belong to the diptote declension. E.g. ṣaghīr (صغير) 'small' derives the elative ’aṣghar (أصغر) 'smaller', jadīd (جديد) 'new' derives ’ajadd (أجد) 'newer', ghanī (غني) 'rich' derives ’aghnā (أغنى) 'richer'.

However, there are several words that have particular feminine and plural forms when the elative is prefixed with the definite article, although the agreement is not always observed in modern usage. The feminine singular in such cases takes the context CuCCā, the masculine plural takes ’aCCaCūna or ’aCāCiC, and the feminine plural takes CuCCayāt or CuCaC. These feminine and plural forms had much more extensive use in ancient poetry. E.g. The adjective kabīr كبير 'big' is changed to ’akbar أكبر, kubrā كبرى in the feminine singular, ’akābir (أكابر) in the masculine plural and kubrayāt (كبريات) in the feminine plural.

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