Series B

—Which of these two pictures is the more beautiful?
This picture is more beautiful than that.
—Which of these three pictures is most beautiful?
Which is the most beautiful picture in the room?
—Which of these two games is the more amusing?
This game is more amusing than that.
This game is most amusing of all.
—This drawing is good.
That drawing is better.
That drawing is best.
—There are some beads on this table.
There are more beads on that table.
There are most beads on that table.
—There is a little water in this glass.
There is less water in that glass.
There is least water in that glass.
—Of these two children John is the elder.
Of these three children Mary is the eldest.
Mary is older than John.
John is older than Laura.

A set of exercises may be arranged to bring out the paradymns of comparison by means of suffixes (-er, -est) and of adverbs (more, most). Here the series of cards for the positive adjectival forms are, as usual, brown, the phonograms for -er and -est in lighter and darker shades of brown respectively. The cards for more and most as adverbs are colored pink. When properly arranged, the cards appear as follows:

longtallthicksmooth
long ertall erthick ersmooth er
long esttall estthick estsmooth est
shortdarklightrough
short erdark erlight errough er
short estdark estlight estrough est
beautifulamusinginteresting
more beautifulmore amusingmore interesting
most beautiful most amusing most interesting

A second exercise contains cards for each of the forms for these same words. There are three colors: brown, light brown and dark brown (superlative). There are in addition similar cards for the adjectives of irregular comparisons, and three title cards: Positive, Comparative, Superlative. The exercise results as follows:

PositiveComparativeSuperlative
longlongerlongest
talltallertallest
thickthickerthickest
smoothsmoothersmoothest
shortshortershortest
darkdarkerdarkest
lightlighterlightest
roughrougherroughest
beautifulmore beautifulmost beautiful
amusingmore amusingmost amusing
interesting more interesting most interesting
oldeldereldest
manymoremost
goodbetterbest
badworseworst
littlelessleast

XI