"Identifying Things By Comparing Their Order"

Martin & Rose (2007: 167-8):

So things can be identified by comparing the intensity of their qualities, with words like better and best. They can also be identified by comparing their quantity, with words like most, more, fewer, less; so much, so little:

Spiritual murder is more inhumane than a messy, physical murder. 

What's wrong with him?

Could he have changed so much?

And they can be identified by comparing their order:

As an eighteen-year-old, I met a young man in his twenties.
An extremely short marriage to someone else failed all because I married to forget
More than a year ago, I met my first love again through a good friend.

Helena refers to him as her first love to distinguish him from someone else she later married. Other resources for identifying things by their order include first second, third; next, last; preceding, subsequent, former, latter.

Tutu also uses comparison to identify things:

the application should be dealt with in a public hearing
unless such a hearing was likely to lead to a miscarriage of justice

Here such a refers to a particular class of hearing (a public one), and no other.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the function of comparative reference is not to identify things by comparing their qualities or quantities, but to create cohesion in the text by presuming information from the text itself. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 632-3):

Comparative reference items function in nominal and adverbial groups; and the comparison is made with reference either to general features of identity, similarity and difference or to particular features of quality and quantity.

[2] As previously noted, words like best and most are superlatives, not comparatives, and do not make comparative reference.

[3] To be clear, this is an instance of structural cataphora — since the presumed information is provided within the same nominal group — and so, not an instance of cohesive reference.

[4] To be clear, this is not an instance of comparative reference, since what's wrong with him provides no frame of reference by which so much makes a comparison.

[5] To be clear, Numeratives do not serve as comparative reference items, because they do not make a comparison in general terms of identity, similarity or difference, or particular features of quantity or quality; see Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 632).

[6] To be clear, merely distinguishing one person from another does not, in itself, constitute an instance of comparative reference. For example, Helena could have distinguished her 'loves' using Classifiers, such as  'English' vs 'Boer', neither of which is a comparative reference item.

[7] To be clear, the function of comparative reference is not to identify things, but to create cohesion in the text by presuming information from the text itself.

[8] To be clear, the comparative reference item such functions cohesively by presuming a standard of reference in the preceding text: public.