Talk:related

Can "related" be used as a suffix? For example, "This discussion is Wiktionary-related"... That is to say I'm wondering if it can be used in a similar manner to "-based" since the meaning is essentially the same in this context. --207.47.151.197 21:56, 25 August 2008 (UTC)Reply

Yes, but we tend to call these things "combined forms" rather than suffixes (when they retain the hyphen). I've added an example. SemperBlotto 22:02, 25 August 2008 (UTC)Reply

I agree that the word can be comparated but I argue it should be that with ”more closely” and ”most closely”, rather than just with ”more” and ”most”. This makes more sense in Swedish where ”more closely” is just one word. What do you think. Further and furthest are used at away for example so I don’t think this should be a problem. It sounds very wrong to me that something can be more related, rather than more closely related to something.Jonteemil (talk) 10:40, 27 January 2019 (UTC)Reply

I’d say that these are comparitives of “closely related” and not of “related” per se. Some examples of use of “more related”: “That issue, however, is more related to my hardware than any problems with HDR, as far as I can tell.”; “The change in lyrics sentiments does not necessarily reflect what the musicians and songwriters wanted to express, but is more related to what music consumers wanted to listen to in each year.”; “An implicit goal of flight or freeze is, strangely enough, more related to survival, while fight is more related to development.”  --Lambiam 15:23, 27 January 2019 (UTC)Reply

@Lambiam: I thought that as well, but then ”further away” is the comparative of ”far away” rather than simply ”away”, which en.wikt. apparently doesn’t think. Although your usage examples does show that in one sense, ”related” can be comparated with more/most. In the sense of people being related though, I have a hard time seeing the more/most comparation.Jonteemil (talk) 16:05, 27 January 2019 (UTC)Reply

The form “more away” feels ungrammatical (to me), while “more related” is fine – although in most cases I myself would use “related more”, at least in writing, like here: “Carbon flow of heliobacteria is related more to clostridia than to the green sulfur bacteria.”. In speech I think I would say “more related”.  --Lambiam 16:25, 27 January 2019 (UTC)Reply

@Lambiam: I agree, I just think it’s contradictive to say that ”more closely related” is the comparative of ”closely related” while not thinking that ”further away” is the comparative of ”far sway”. Either way you must agree with me that ”My sister is more related to me than my cousin” also feels very wrong. In one sense the more/most comparation is evidently correct but not for all senses. How do you feel about splitting the definitions with two adjective headers, one with more/most comparation and one with more/most closely?Jonteemil (talk) 19:34, 27 January 2019 (UTC)Reply

@Lambiam These don't seem like real comparative use of related. They're comparing two options, represented by whole clauses that coincidentally begin with the word "related": "more than ", "more " (the other option is "what the musicians and songwriters wanted to express", though the construction isn't perfectly parallel), “An implicit goal of flight or freeze is, strangely enough, more , while fight is more ”. This kind of construction is often cited in RFD as evidence of comparative use, but it shouldn't be. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:29, 28 January 2019 (UTC)Reply

@Chuck Entz: – I see your point, but I am not convinced. Take the following sentence found in the wild, one from many similar ones: “A logarithm is closer to a constant than to a power; this observation is the main reason for which the half-filled Hubbard model is closer to the one-dimensional Luttinger liquid than to the three dimensional Fermi liquid.” This, to me, seems entirely analogous to the examples with “more related”. Yet here there can be no doubt that “closer” is a comparative – what else could it be?  --Lambiam 11:33, 28 January 2019 (UTC)Reply