Irregular forms of comparison

Besides the already mentioned synthetic and analytical forms of degrees of comparison, there are irregular forms. A few adjectives have suppletive forms of comparison which are derived from different roots,

E.g. good - better - best, bad - worse - worst

Is Lucille a good dancer?

You're such a better cook than your mother was, Elizabeth.

The best women are divorced... And the best men are married.

It's a bad time now, and a worse time coming.

...it's the worst year we've had for a long time.

A few adjectives have 2 sets of forms of comparison,

E.g. old - 1) older - oldest (age in general); 2) elder - eldest (age within the family)

She is an old woman...

His friends were older than Vivian.

...white's was one of the oldest clubs in England...

My elder brother was in a car accident last week.

The eldest daughter does all the housework.

Since the second set of forms (elder - eldest) has a meaning slightly different from the meaning of the positive degree (old), they can hardly be regarded as grammatical forms of degrees of comparison, but should be qualified as separate lexical units which originally were, perhaps, grammatical degrees of comparison of the adjective 'old'.

Absolute use of the superlative degree

Adjectives in the superlative degree imply limitation, that is why the noun modified by an adjective in the superlative degree always combines with the definite article,

E.g. It was one of the worst days for him.

Since adjectives preceded by the definite article are easily substantivized, the superlative degree is often used absolutely, either with the head noun mentioned before or without any noun whatsoever,

E.g. Their pool was perhaps the oldest in the country...

...the villa in Sardinia was her favourite. It was by no means the largest, but it was the most colourful, the friendliest.

...let's hope for the best.

But if the worst comes to the worst, don't blame me.

4. Substantivization of adjectives

Adjectives can be substantivized, i.e. become nouns. When adjectives are converted into nouns, they no longer indicate properties of substances, but come to express substances possessing these properties. In English, the process of substantivization is easier than in Russian due to the scantiness (недостаточность) of inflections. Substantivization can be whole and partial.

Adjectives wholly converted into nouns acquire not only the grammatical meaning of nouns, but their typical morphological and syntactic characteristics. These features are:

1) Ability to form the plural,

E.g. All natives have good hands and feet.

2) Ability to be used in the Genitive case,

E.g. He is investigating the ancients' conception of the universe.

3) Ability to be used with the indefinite article,

E.g. I spoke the language like a native...

4) Ability to be modified by an adjective,

E.g. My uncle is my nearest living relative.

5) The functions of subject or object in the sentence,

E.g. A native was silently rowing up-stream... (subject)

The government of the island treated the natives badly (object).

More often substantivization is but partial. In the case of partial substantivization adjectives acquire the grammatical meaning of nouns (thingness), the noun combinability with the definite article and the noun functions of subject and object,

E.g. The poor must stand together everywhere (subject).

...it seems to me I saw everybody but the dead (object).

But they lack the grammatical categories of case and number and never combine with the indefinite article.

A.I. Smirnitsky thinks that in order to become a noun, an adjective must acquire number distinctions. That is why he does not recognize partial substantivization and treats cases like 'the rich, the poor' as the use of adjectives without nouns.

But the category of number is common only to countable nouns. Uncountable nouns stand outside the category of number. Nevertheless nobody denies them the status of nouns. So, the argument of A.I. Smirnitsky is not convincing: partial substantivization does exist.