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    An inherent comparative
    quickinfo

    The adjective ander other, different, else behaves as an inherent comparative, in that it contains an implicit comparison with another adjective, whether mentioned or not.

    1
    ek sou 'n ander mens wees
    I want.to.AUX.MOD.PRT a other human.being be
    I would be another person

    It differs from other adjectives in that, although it also functions as a partitive, (the this sentence example) the predicative form also ends in -s, as can be seen from these examples, in particular this sentence below:

    2
    Het daar iets anders gebeur?
    have.AUX there something else·PVT.GEN happened
    Has something else happened?
    3
    Dis heeltemal 'n ander saak.
    it.be.PRS totally a different matter
    It's a totally different matter.
    4
    Die situasie is heeltemal anders.
    the situation be.PRS totally different
    The situation is totally different.
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    The adjective ander other, different, else behaves in a peculiar way in comparison to other adjectives. It appears in undeclined form in the attributive position, for example die ander saak the other matter, as can also be seen in the following construction:

    5
    Sy het 'n ander en beter fiets gekoop as haar man.
    she have.AUX an other and better bicycle bought than her husband
    She bought a different and better bicycle than her husband.

    and also with the normal partitive suffix -s, as in iets ander·s something else, different. However, the suffix is also required in both predicative and adverbial positions, as can be seen in the examples below, and may be coordinated with ordinary comparative adjectives:

    6
    Hierdie fliek is anders en verfrissend.
    this movie be.PRS different and refreshing
    This film is different and refreshing
    7
    Hy praat vinniger en anders as wat ek gedink het.
    he talk faster and different PTCL.SIMT that.REL I thought have.AUX
    He talks faster and different from what I had thought.

    While it does not have a comparative (or superlative) form, whether morphological or periphrastic, semantically it behaves as an inherent comparative, as argued in the run-up to example (1) above.

    What is further peculiar about anders different, is that it has an informal pendant, anderste, which appears to have a superlative suffix -ste, but operates in the same syntactic contexts as anders, as can be seen from these examples:

    8
    Waag om anderste te wees.
    dare for.COMP different PTCL.INF be.INF
    Dare to be different.
    9
    vanuit 'n heel anderste hoek
    from.out a totally other angle
    from a totally different angle
    10
    'n Griek leef nou maar eenmaal anderste as 'n Jood.
    a Greek lives now but once different than a Jew
    A Greek simply lives unlike a Jew.

    Finally, a similarly informal variant (possibly more informal than anderste) is anderster, which, in addition to the adverbial meaning of 'otherwise', has the same syntactic distribution as anderste, demonstrated by examples (8) to (10). Examples from the same corpus (TK) are presented:

    11
    Ek wil nou nie weer anderster wees nie ...
    I want.to.AUX.MOD now not again different be PTCL.NEG
    I do not wish to be different again ...
    12
    Dan was dit 'n baie anderster storie.
    then be.PRT it a very different story
    Then it would have been a totally different story.
    13
    Hulle het hom anderster laat kyk na die lewe.
    they have.AUX him different let look at the life
    They let hom look differently at life.
    References
      About this article
      Author(s): Ernst Kotzé, Adri Breed
      Category: Afrikaans Syntax
      Keywords: inherent comparative
      Version: 1.0, May 2020
      Version history:
      version editor(s) date remarks
      1.0 Ernst Kotzé, Adri Breed May 2020
      This is a beta version.
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