Talk:lieber

liebsten
German adverbs do not inflect, so where do these inflected forms come from? -- Liliana • 00:44, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
 * They are correct according to the German Wiktionary. SemperBlotto (talk) 06:26, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
 * 'Ich gehe am liebsten allein.' Korn &#91;kʰʊ̃ːæ̯̃n&#93; (talk) 10:56, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
 * German Wiktionary has no guarantee of correctness. And that example is a use of the adjective . The exact wording is even used in de:lieb as an example sentence. -- Liliana • 11:27, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
 * German adverbs do inflect for comparative and superlative (Ich singe besser als du, aber er singt am besten von uns allen). These forms are the suppletive comparative and superlative of the adverb . —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:27, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Deutsche_Grammatik: "Das Adverb (Umstandswort) hilft, innerhalb eines Satzes die Umstände näher zu kennzeichnen, unter denen etwas geschieht. Sie sind nicht flektierbar, d. h. sie sind unveränderlich bzw. nicht beugbar." This should be as clear as it can get. -- Liliana • 10:46, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
 * German Wikibooks has just as little guarantee of correctness as German Wiktionary. Obviously they're thinking of things like number, gender, and case (which adverbs obviously don't inflect for), but they've forgotten that adverbs do have comparatives and superlatives. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 10:53, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
 * 'Am liebsten' in my example is a word describing the manner in which a verb is conducted. I may not be a big city linguist, but to me that seems a pretty solid case for calling that thing an adverb. The fact that if you rephrase the sentence in a positive, you'll end up with 'gern' and not 'lieb' is another hint that we don't have the adjective here. Beware, lemmings tend to all fall off the same cliff. (Making a statement about the policy of the same name.) Korn &#91;kʰʊ̃ːæ̯̃n&#93; (talk) 11:21, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
 * The decisions of lemmings at other dictionaries all reflect their assessment of what a sufficient number of users would be unnappy not to find. At the dictionaries that have professional lexicographers and librarians on staff the inclusion decisions reflect a weighing of user expectations and academic linguistics. Why wouldn't we follow them except in cases of clear error? To this outside observer this doesn't look like clear error. What do those authors mean by inflection?
 * IMHO, Wikis cannot be assumed to have had careful professionals involved and, as a matter of good practice, should not be and generally are not taken as in themselves authoritative for purposes of our discussions. DCDuring TALK 15:20, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
 * We shouldn't follow other dictionaries just for the heck of it, as Liliana, which I well respect, seems (!) to do in this case. I'm well aware that you, During, aren't intending to copy them just for the heck of it. But by having that mindset, you already rendered the lemmings principle void. Using the lemmings rule, we can only ever copy mistakes or restrict ourselves negatively. If we copy good, useful or desired things from other dictionaries, we copy them because they're good, useful or desired, not because they're from other dictionaries. For a boon, there will always be a reason other than 'they do it too'. Whenever we actually have to resort to the lemmings argument, that just means we found no proper reason to do a thing. Which means we should not do the thing in the first place. Which means we do not need the lemmings rule in the first place. Korn &#91;kʰʊ̃ːæ̯̃n&#93; (talk) 23:43, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
 * For any entry to which we put our minds we can usually bring its quality above that of all but the very best of professional dictionaries with paid staffs. We have more space than print dictionaries and more willing to use our space for extensive content than commercial online dictionaries. But for speed we often copy content from uncopyrighted sources and focus our more creative efforts on modern terms and modern uses of older terms. But I really don't think we put our minds to more common words and especially highly polysemic ones.
 * A consequence of having more space is that we can be more inclusive than other dictionaries. So, for purposes of including entries we should always have any entry that any dictionary or serious glossary has. (I exclude WordNet and it followers as lemmings worth following uncritically.) I don't have any German dictionaries bookmarked, but the translating dictionaries I've looked at have a definition for lieber and am liebsten as adverbs. They ignore the notion that it could be considered a suppletive of gern. But this relies on translating dictionaries and the translation rationale for inclusion. I'd be more interested in how German monolingual dictionaries presented these. DCDuring TALK 00:10, 20 June 2015 (UTC)
 * The Oxford-Duden German English dictonary has them as adverbs in the entry for gern. DCDuring TALK 00:52, 20 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Deutsches Wörterbuch: Bedeutungsgeschichte und Aufbau unseres Wortschatzes] refers to them as "Steigergungsformen" of gern. DCDuring TALK 01:57, 20 June 2015 (UTC)


 * @Liliana-60 & Angr: (German, Latin and English) adverbs do not inflect, but comparison is not part of inflection. Inflection is either declension/declination or conjugation, and declension/declination is a changing case, gender or number, not changing the grade. Well, at least nowaydays. In antique times the Latin term "declinatio" refered to every change of a word, which also includes derivation. -93.196.239.107 13:30, 20 June 2015 (UTC)


 * Keep lieber and liebsten as gradations of adverb gern. The sources that state that German adverbs do not inflect probably have the notion of inflection in mind that excludes changing the grade, as noted by the anon above. Duden online entry for gern has "gern" as an adverb, and states the following in its "Grammatik" section: "Adverb; lieber, am liebsten". And I find Korn's example "Ich gehe am liebsten allein" to show "am liebsten" as an adverb rather than an adjective. Korn's note above on "rephrase the sentence in a positive" seems convincing. On yet another note, the English adverb "rather" that fits reasonably well as a translation of "lieber" is suggestive as well. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:03, 21 June 2015 (UTC)


 * Keep. The nominator is mistaken in stating that adverbs don't inflect. In addition to the Duden, the DWDS also has these adverbs as comparative and superlative forms of gern. - -sche (discuss) 06:45, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
 * RFD kept per consensus. Boldface keeps: Dan Polansky, -sche; pro-delete nomination: Liliana-60; pro-keeping comments: Korn, Angr, and probably DCDuring. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:01, 28 June 2015 (UTC)