Stephen ἔγραψε·
Can someone help me with how to express thoughts such as these:
(1) The room is big.
(2) The room is too big.
(3) The room is really too big.
(4) The room is not big enough.
(5) The room is really not big enough.
Is there are simple transformation with an antonym such as; the room is not big enough / the room is too small?
This is a very good question. And in searching it out, I don't know that I can give you one single answer, and please forgive my rambling. I suggest you use the search engine at the University of Chicago's implementation of the LSJ lexicon to search for words like 'too' and 'very'.The UChicago LSJ implementation can be found at
http://perseus.uchicago.edu/Reference/LSJ.html. And even then, this could be an English idiom that has difficulty translating between the two languages. Greek does not use the words 'very' and 'too' (= degree) in the same frequency as English. The word 'too' (= degree in English) is related to the word 'very', but 'too' includes a sort of speaker judgmental opinion that the speaker views the condition as being excessive/insufficient. In addition, Greek has more ways than English to add a speaker's opinion, having a plethora of particles to add the speaker's emotive content to a statement.
The positive of the sentence:
It is big. - statement
It is too big. - statement with judgement of excess
It is way too big. - statement with (decidal) judgement of extreme excess
The negative of the sentence:
It is not big. - statement
It is not big enough. -statement with judgement of insufficiency
It is really not big enough. -statement with (decided) judgement of insufficiency
The word 'really' is a little ambiguous in English. Also 'enough' adds a totally different concept, and most likely in Greek needs the word like ἀρκεῖ, δεῖ, κτλ.
Perhaps you wanted to state the negatives in a parallel fashion:
It is not big.
It is not too big.
It is not too big at all.
Another question would be: Is the comparative used as the the superlative. (Note: The superlative was falling into disuse in the Koine period, and the comparative began doing the function of the superlative. E.g.
It is the smaller = It is the smallest == It is too small.
One way of saying 'very, excessively' is to use a word like ἄγαν, δὴ, δὴ μάλα, λίαν, πανύ, μάλα, πολλα, σφόδρα. But perhaps more frequently, nouns and adjectives will have that sense as part of a compound with the following prefixes being the most productive. Search the UChicago LSJ implementation for words starting with the following prefixes:
Too:
http://perseus.uchicago.edu/perseus-cgi ... NCT=PHRASE
Very:
http://perseus.uchicago.edu/perseus-cgi ... NCT=PHRASE. You will find that in the examples in LSJ, the word 'too' is included in the gloss of many adjectives with no other adverb modifying the adjective.
ἀρι-
αὐτο-
βαρυ -
δια -
δυσ-
εν-
ἐξ-
ἐρι -
εὐ-
ζα -
κατα-, κατ- καθ-
μεγαλο-
παν-, παγ-, παμ-
περ
περι-
πολυ-
ὑπερ-
The converse of 'very', is often an adjective with the alpha privative. Depending on the lexeme (adjectival word being expounded), the negative structure may not be a simple οὐκ + adjective. In addition, other words may be used, depending upon the word (adjective) which is being elaborated upon:
οὐχ ἱκανός
μόλις
μέτριος
οὐκ ἀρκεῖ
μηδαμῶς
σχεδόν
οὔπως
παντελής
περ
So one way of expressing those above statements could be kept to the simplest of structures,
μέγα
μέγιστον
μέγιστον δή | πάμμεγα |ὑπέρμεγα
οὐ μέγα
[τῷ μήκει] οὐκ μέγιστον | ? ἀμεγέθες ?
οὔπως μέγα γε
I'm just trying to get some of the pieces together in one place here. What a person needs is good examples drawn from TLG.