Comparatives and superlatives

[Forgorin]

Hi. I have a question regarding comparatives and superlatives.

I work in a Japanese high school. One of the teachers asked me if this sentence was correct: "Babe Ruth was much the most talented baseball player in those days."

I told him that you could not use much because it was only used with comparatives; 'the most' being a superlative modifier. I said that 'by far' would be best.

He then dug up a Japanese Ministry of Education textbook (Forest 6th edition grammar reference book page 268) which says "He is by far [much] the best at playing the piano."

I told him that the best is the superlative form and 'much' can not be used since it is only used with comparatives.

I am at a loss how to explain to him why it is incorrect. I am hoping that one of you can help me. Besides telling him that the Japanese Ministry of Education text book is wrong.

Yours,
Michael

[fluffyhamster]

Hi Michael. Here's what Roger Berry's Collins COBUILD English Guides 10: Determiners & Quantifiers has to say, in chapter 8 section 8.4 'Adverb uses of much', subentry 'much the' (pg 111):

'Much' can be used before 'the' and a superlative or comparative adjective to emphasize a comparison, giving the idea of 'by far'. This is a formal use.

China would have been (much (the)/a lot) poorer without Hong Kong. [The brackets and 'a lot' alternative added by me; note that one cannot say *by far poorer - FH].

It is much the best place in Britain to live.

Which is immediately followed by an entry for 'much like, much the same' (for which 'by far' obviously isn't a synonym):

'Much' can be used before 'the same' and 'like', giving the meaning 'to a great extent'.

Folks are pretty much the same wherever you go.
The music business is much like any other.

Instead of 'much like' you can also say 'very like'.

So it isn't so much that the JTE is wrong and you are right, but to my mind rather that the JTE has simply not picked up on the significance of the square bracketing in the example in the Forest grammar (surely the unbracketed option should be taken as the most common, the default phrasing!), or consulted other sources (e.g. for any of those possible labellings or indications of more formal versus more informal usage). Google however isn't that illuminating on a bare-numbers basis: "much the" gets just over 27 million hits, which isn't an exactly insignificant number even if "by far the" gets over 132 million in comparison.

[fluffyhamster]

This might also be of interest:

7.3 Qualifiers modifying comparative structures

.....

7.3.2 Superlatives
much the most The very most; by far the most: CIC [the Cambridge International Corpus - FH] has 3.8 iptmw [instances per ten million words - FH] in British texts and 0.2 in American. <Much the most difficult bit was hiding them in the cupboard.> 1998 Rowling 160 [HP and the Chamber of Secrets. London: Bloomsbury - FH] (US ed. By far the hardest part).

(From page 158 of John Algeo's British or American English? A Handbook of Word and Grammar Patterns. CUP 2006. A lot of this great book was previewable on Google Books the last time I looked! ).

Then there are the somewhat "clunky" examples* that one can find in dictionaries like the Taishukan Genius (E-J, at the entry for 'far', though this example also appears/is recycled somewhere in the J-E dictionary!) adding to the potentially toxic brew: This novel is by far more interesting than that one. Cf: This novel is by far the more interesting.

*It would probably help if in the Genius' main/initial example above they suggested or did things like: the possible substitution of 'by far' with 'much'; the possible removal of 'by' from 'by far'; bracketed all but the essential 'more interesting'; used whatever punctuation would indicate helpful pauses in speaking the line (or indeed still just "silently" reading it) e.g. comma(s) to separate the 'by far' off from the 'This novel is', and certainly from the 'more interesting...'.

[Stephen Jones]

Appears to be a British/American difference.

'much the most' is by far the most common in British English (32 to 1 in the BNC) whilst the proportion in the COCA is 14 to 832.

[fluffyhamster]

Can you perhaps explain ("remind me") quite what '32 to 1' and '14 to 832' mean, SJ? Pretty please? It's been a while since I've really looked at BYU's corpora (I've forgotten my password, should rejoin!) so all I'm really doing at the moment is interpreting them as hazy ratios or odds of something (and I suspect I'm not alone in this!).

[Heath]

It looks to me like the student just interpreted the style used in the book incorrectly.

Rather than indicating another possible form, the [much] looks like a simple gloss to help readers with the meaning of 'by far'.

[fluffyhamster]

Good point, Heath - it's surely a gloss! (Funny how the right notion-word doesn't enter one's brain sometimes!). And therefore only a rough equivalent, in terms of E-E "translation", and probably not (to most people) quite the equal in terms of actual if not potential usage, of the unbracketed form.