Reconstruction talk:Proto-Slavic/vyšьjь

Does it really make sense to have comparative forms of adjectives listed as separate reconstructions? --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 00:18, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Why wouldn't it? For some words it's the only way to list them at all, because they have no corresponding positive form. And some adjectives also have irregular comparatives. 00:21, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Exceptions are exceptions and irregular paradigms always require special treatment, but in general for regularly formed comparatives (well, this is a bit different with *-ok being dropped) it seems unnecessary to me. We might as well create separate entries for definite forms of adjectives, superlatives, participles etc. Positive, comparative and superlative forms formed a paradigm of a single lexeme and should be treated as such within a single entry. This kind of approach seems a bit too dispersive to me - the useful information is listed on several pages, when it would be more more clear to have it in one place. Surely everyone interested in Proto-Slavic *vysokъ would be interested in *vyšьjь as well, and vice versa. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 00:56, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
 * But it becomes much harder to list the descendants that way. Not every language that has a descendant of *vysokъ necessarily has a descendant of *vyšьjь as well. And we may have entries in the future that link to the comparative in etymologies. 01:02, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes but how many cases are there like that? Bulgarian will never get listed because it ditched Proto-Slavic way of forming comparatives altogether. I suspect that in most of the cases those that do have the reflex of a Proto-Slavic positive form, and have inherited Proto-Slavic comparative forming mechanism (with all it peculiarities), will have a regular reflex of the corresponding Proto-Slavic comparative as well. Regarding descendants - well they could all be listed next to each other, separated by a slash or something. Comparatives in the main namespace are usually treated as inflected forms, rather than full-blown entries, and rarely have their own etymologies (irregular paradigms are of course an exception). If we gave etymologies to nominative singular masculine comparatives (our chosen citation form, a pure culturally-induced convention), we might a well start adding etymologies to other inflected forms of the base adjective, in different grammatical genders, cases and grades... --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 01:23, 22 July 2013 (UTC)