- Yes and yes. ;) You know who brought this up? It was E. B. White. Founding fathers blurted too. But I guess it was more natural sounding at that time.
尚能饭 wrote:
Yes and no.:) The following is from an article I published a few years ago, in case you'd care:
Unique (and other absolute terms such as： chief, complete, perfect, prime, circular, equal, parallel, perpendicular and so on) cannot be compared, as by “more” or “most” or used with an intensive modifier such as “very”, “so”, or “quite”. 但任何规则都会有例外, 如：
美国建国之父们 (the founding fathers) 要使美国 “to form a more perfect union.”
Chicago is no less unique an American city than New York or San Francisco.
He wanted to make his record collection more complete.
You can improve the sketch by making the lines more perpendicular.
可是，下面例句中的最高级和 very 就不能用：
The two central tail feathers of Protopteryx are very unique in birds…
“…including asymmetric wing feathers, down feathers, and the most unique unbranched central tail feather.”
touche wrote:
嗨，这是两百多年前的文字了。再说语法也有错误。“a more perfect Union” , it is either perfect or it isn't. You don't say I am more one hundred percent right. Right?
xw wrote:
Touche不要高兴的过早。关于这一点与浮生的讨论有一段时间了，这
回是老尚的一线，我不再喧宾夺主，另开一线答浮生。
就抄一段The United States Constitution：
Preamble
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. of the 52 words, 26 are derivatives from Latin; but of the non-Latin twenty-six, six are the word 'the', three are 'and', and three are 'of'; that is to say, twelve of the non-Latin twenty-six hardly count in giving the idea of the passage.
touche