Comparative clauses (ambiguity)

[Quisutdeus]

Hi, everyone. I tried to do an exercise from a textbook, where it asks to translate a sentence, and I stumbled upon a doubt:

”Superiores arborum rami sunt graciliores quam inferiores.” **

The word “inferiores” gave me such a headache, because to compare adjectives one must put both adjectives in the comparative and the second one preceded by “quam” (which in the mentioned sentence it occurs as such), and if it was comparing two objects, the higher branches and the lower branches, the second term must be in the ablative case, or in the same case as the first term plus preceded by “quam” (which also occurs in the mentioned sentence). So, I got two options in my mind to translate it:

(I) The higher branches are more fragile than the lower ones.” (it’s the most possible translation for its logical sense)
(II) The higher branches are more fragile than low.” (I know such sentence doesn’t even make sense, but it theoretically could be possible, right?)

To sum up, my doubt is how could I know if the comparative sentence is comparing two substantives, or two adjectives within the same subject. Just to give a personal example I made to make my doubt clearer:

“Intelligens regis filius est sapientior quam ditior.” (The intelligent son of the king is wiser than the richer one/than rich.”

How can I differentiate if this sentence is comparing terms or qualities, namely, if sapientior quam ditior means “wiser than rich” or “wiser than the richer one”.

Hope I could express my doubt to you guys,

Thanks.

** The answer the textbook gives is the option (I).

 

[Gregorius Textor]

I think you should trust your logical instinct and favor (I), and don't let yourself get flustered over interpretations that are grammatically possible but don't make sense, because

(a) (I) makes more sense than (II), which in fact doesn't make sense at all, as you observed;

(b) Latin writers often like to leave out words that are understood, or to let one word function in two roles, so that we should understand ”Superiores arborum rami sunt graciliores quam inferiores" as ”Superiores arborum rami sunt graciliores quam inferiores rami". I mean, it would just be too tedious to say "rami" twice here, right?

Incidentally, I would understand "graciliores" as "more slender" or "thinner" (which does of course suggest more fragile, but that's not what it's saying).

As for the sentence you made up, “Intelligens regis filius est sapientior quam ditior,” I am not sure it would be possible to interpret that unambiguously without some context. Was there a richer, other son mentioned? Or maybe we could say that it doesn't make sense to say "wiser than richer", any more than to say "more orange than tall"---and then we might conclude that there had to be another, richer son, even if he was not mentioned?

 

[Pacifica]

As for the sentence you made up, “Intelligens regis filius est sapientior quam ditior,” I am not sure it would be possible to interpret that unambiguously without some context. Was there a richer, other son mentioned? Or maybe we could say that it doesn't make sense to say "wiser than richer", any more than to say "more orange than tall"---and then we might conclude that there had to be another, richer son, even if he was not mentioned?

I would say that it's more natural to take both comparatives to refer to this intelligent son (he's wiser than he is rich), at least in the absence of context suggesting otherwise. But even if there were some context, I suspect the other meaning would most likely have been worded differently.

You can always come up with sentences that are theoretically ambiguous, but they'll often be either totally unlikely or more likely to mean one thing than the other. In actual literature, however, real ambiguity rarely happens. There are two main reasons that I can see for this: 1) as just stated, often, one would actually have to go out of one's way to create ambiguity; 2) when ambiguity could arise on its own, good writers usually avoid it.

 

[Laurentius]

I don't remember reading any rule that says you can't use quam+comparative with substantives.

 

[Pacifica]

Neither do I but I'm not sure what you're referring to?

 

[Laurentius]

Neither do I but I'm not sure what you're referring to?

My mistake. Perhaps I have been confused by his usage of the word plus, which I think he used as an English word but it's common in Latin comparatives as well.

 

[Gregorius Textor]

I would say that it's more natural to take both comparatives to refer to this intelligent son (he's wiser than he is rich), at least in the absence of context suggesting otherwise. But even if there were some context, I suspect the other meaning would most likely have been worded differently.

Okay, maybe I was misled here by two things: (1) my tendency to interpret things too literally (wisdom and riches are not strictly comparable); and (2) the fact that in English we say "wiser than he is rich" (one comparative)---meaning, I think, he is wise but not rich (and maybe this has some implicit reference to the statistical distributions of wisdom and riches, like wiser than average but not richer than average?), but we don't say "wiser than he is richer", but in the Latin we have the two comparatives, "sapientior" and "ditior".

 

[Pacifica]

we don't say "wiser than he is richer"

Indeed we don't, but Latin usually does something like that, as alluded to in the OP:

to compare adjectives one must put both adjectives in the comparative and the second one preceded by “quam”

So "he's wiser than he is rich" = sapientior quam ditior est; "the river is wider than it is deep" = flumen latius quam altius est; etc.

 

[Quisutdeus]

Woow, thank you very much everyone!

Yeah, I think I’m trying to avoid all ambiguity, and believe that language must be mathematical and be as plain as possible. I need to believe my guts more and stop trying to racionalise every possible interpretation.

Thanks, everyone.