🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov20.130245.4164@memstvx1.memst.edu>, connolly@memstvx1 writes:
>In article <1992Nov20.165547.26076@leland.Stanford.EDU>, alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson) writes:
>> In article <1992Nov19.215659.4152@memstvx1.memst.edu>, connolly@memstvx1 writes:
>>>There are some fossilized expressions of this sort in English:
>>>
>>>	knight errant
>>>	durance vile
>>>	Chicken Little
>>>
>>>But these examples are true fossils; other nouns and adjectives cannot
>>>be substituted, and the adjective cannot be compared.  In other words,
>>>there is no _*knight peripatetic_ or _*musician errant_, and certainly
>>>no _*durance vilest_.  _Proper_ is unusual, perhaps unique, in that it
>>>is only postpositive in this usage and can be used after many other nouns
>>>than _city_.  But even _proper_ cannot then be compared (_*city most
>>>proper_).
>>>
>>>--Leo Connolly
>> 
>> There is, on the other hand, _durance most vile_.
>
>Gee, I missed that one!  Or did I?  Maybe not.  The darned thing lacks
>a determiner, without which there is no superlative meaning.  Now _most_
>is used for other things than to form suppletive superlatives. Perhaps
>it is.  What do you lurkers think?

How would you characterize "most" in such sentences as

	I am most unhappy with that analysis

then?

I get two readings, by the bye.
-- 
Rich Alderson   'I wish life was not so short,' he thought.  'Languages take
                such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.'
                                                        --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@leland.stanford.edu                              _The Lost Road_