On 'Better' And 'Best' As "Grammatical Items"

 Martin & Rose (2007: 44):

Next let’s examine vocabulary items that include degrees of intensity, such as happy/delighted/ecstatic. These kinds of words are known as attitudinal lexis, i.e. ‘lexis with attitude’. The intensifiers we have already looked at, like better/best, all/several/some, must/would/might, are grammatical items. That is their meaning depends on being combined with 'content words’. By contrast, ‘content words’ are referred to technically as lexical items, or simply lexis.

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[1] The words 'better' and 'best' are not "grammatical items"; they combine the lexical features of 'good' with the grammatical features 'comparative' and 'superlative', respectively.

[2] This does not distinguish "grammatical items" from lexical items, since, in both cases, the meaning realised depends on the structural configuration in which they function.

"Grammatical items" are specified by the features of the closed and less delicate systems of the lexicogrammar, whereas lexical items form open sets and are specified by the features of the most delicate systems of the lexicogrammar.  Halliday (2008: 67, 174):

[…] you can, as expected, network through the grammar into the lexis; but what you end up with are not lexical items but lexical features. The lexical item will appear, but it will appear as a conjunct realisation of a number of these terminal features. The features are thus components of the lexical items, but the description differs from a usual componential analysis in two important respects. In the first place, the components are systemic: they are organised in sets of systemic options; and in the second place, more significantly, they are derived by ordered steps in delicacy all the way from the primary grammatical categories. …

The notion of grammaticalisation depends on the notion of a closed system. This has the properties:

1. a small fixed set of possibilities, x/y/z…, which are
2. mutually exclusive, x = “not y or z”, and
3. strictly proportional, x : y : z, is constant, with
4. a defined condition of entry, eg nominal group, and
5. generalised to a large domain of application, eg every major clause …

Lexical items, by contrast, form open sets; they are particular to certain domains, but open-ended and not so mutually defining: you can add a new lexical item to a set without perturbing the other members, whereas with a closed system if any term is added or taken away all the others move around.