Superlative gradation also refers to an explicit standard rather than to a norm. But it places the graded object at the extreme end of the scale. For instance, the largest tree takes a whole range of trees as its field of reference, and we have to know what range is being referred to in order to understand the expression. If we ask The largest in what range?

Comparison does not refer to an implicit norm. Some other object is used for the purpose of comparison and the graded object is measured against it. Thus, This tree is larger can only be understood if we can answer the question Larger than what? The answer is not ‘the norm for trees’ but some other object, possibly, but not necessarily, another tree. The missing information may be given immediately after the comparative expression: This tree is larger than the one in that field. Or it may be
discoverable only by back reference.

If something is ‘hot’, it may be ‘not very hot’ or ‘intensely hot’ or somewhere in between; there is an open-ended, continuous scale of ‘hotness’. Adjectives that express this kind of meaning are
called gradable adjectives.

The last part of our treatment of verbs has to do with the lexicon. Many verbs, like many nouns, are simple in their form; eat is
structurally simple.

There is a particular class of verbs, sometimes known as intensive verbs, for which the concept of the verb as relater of participants is less apt.

In addition to two-place verbs there are threeplace verbs, which denote a situation connecting three participants:

So far in this chapter we have paid a great deal of detailed attention to criteria for identifying a class of words called verbs, and we have done this without referring at all to the kind of denotational meaning that these words have. We
will now look at the meanings of verbs.

In the treatment of verb phrases, no mention has yet been made of the passive voice. The category of voice has two terms: active and passive. The verb phrases eats and to eat are active, while is
eaten and to be eaten are passive:

In Chapter 2 we saw that a noun phrase can have modifiers coming before the head. For instance, in the noun phrase an angry dog, dog is the head and an and angry are modifiers of the head. The word angry is an adjective (see Chapter 4 on adjectives). When adjectives are used to modify heads in a noun phrase, they normally come after
any determiner and before the head.