Date: Thu, 30 Nov 1995 22:26:42 EST

From: Larry Horn LHORN[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALEVM.CIS.YALE.EDU

Subject: Re: So fun



Someone else may be en route to saying this better or with more evidence and

citations, but there's a clear age dialect at work here. 'fun' is definitely

an adjective for those under a certain age. for my kids (now 13 and 11), A

can be funner than B, and C can be the funnest. As Bolinger, Paul, Breal et

al would predict, these are quite distinct from 'funnier', 'funniest', so

there's no logical argument against this particular zero-derivation--except

that in OUR day, back when nouns were nouns, goddammit, 'fun' was a noun and

proud OF it.



Larry