Comparatives and superlatives can both occur in attributive position. The attributive -e ending, which appears on the adjective in the positive degree in (125a), is inflectional in nature and therefore follows the majorative/maximative affix -er/-st in (125b&c).

In the periphrastic forms in (126), the -e ending appears on the adjective itself.

The (c)-examples above also show that the element het, which obligatorily accompanies predicatively used superlatives, cannot be used when the superlative is used in attributive position. The following subsections will further show that the attributive use of the equative, comparative and superlative can have an effect on the determiner selected by the noun phrase.

All three degrees of comparison can occur in predicative position. A special property of the superlative in this position is that it must be preceded by the element het, which is not the case when it occurs in attributive position; cf. (125/126c). So, while the (b) and (c)-examples in (133) show that the equative form even intelligent and the comparative form intelligenter can be used in the copular construction as such, the (d)-examples show that the superlative forms intelligentst and minst intelligent must be preceded by het.

That the superlative must be preceded by het applies not only in the copular construction, but also in the resultative and vinden-constructions in (134).

However, for a predicatively used adjective in the superlative form to be used in an attributively used participle phrase (PartP), the element het is preferably dropped if it is adjacent to the determiner. This can be seen by comparing the (a)-examples in (134) with example (135a). If the determiner and het are separated by another phrase, as in (135b), het must be realized.

Sometimes, however, it is not immediately clear whether an adjective is being used predicatively or attributively. This is because, in certain contexts, noun phrases of the form determiner–adjective–noun undergo N-ellipsis, resulting in the string determiner–adjective. For example, the noun phrase de blauwe avondjurkthe blue evening gown can occasionally appear as de blauwe [e]the blue one, where e stands for the phonetically empty head noun; cf. Section 27.4. For our present topic, it is relevant that N-ellipsis can also apply in predicative constructions like (136).

Consequently, when we are dealing with a neuter noun, predicative constructions like (137a&a'), which take a reduced noun phrase such as het mooiste [e] as their predicate, can easily be confused with predicative constructions like (137b&b'), which take the superlative form het mooist as their predicate.

This problem of confusing the two constructions is aggravated by the fact that in colloquial speech the predicatively used superlative is sometimes also realized with a schwa ending. An example such as De eerste foto is het mooist(e) cannot be analyzed as in (138a), because the empty noun e must be understood as identical with the noun foto and thus must select the non-neuter article de, leaving only the analysis in (138b). This suggests that the strings in the (a)-examples of (137) can also be assigned an alternative analysis involving a predicative AP.

A special case of the predicative use of the majorative is found in idiomatic copular constructions with the dynamic verb wordento become, as in (139), which yield the process meaning “to improve” and “to deteriorate”. That these are idiomatic expressions is clear from the fact that the pronominal PP er ... op is non-referential and can never be replaced by a PP of the form P + NP. The diacritics in these examples show that, in our view, there is a marked difference between the use of the positively valued predicate beterbetter and the negatively valued predicate slechterworse; the form beter is preferred with (quasi-)negation, while the form slechter is preferred with an adverbial phrase such as alleen maaronly. However, since these judgments are not shared by all speakers, we leave this to future research.

The three degrees of comparison can also be found in adverbial position. Example (140d) shows that like predicatively used superlatives, adverbially used superlatives should normally be preceded by the element het.

However, when a superlative adverbial phrase is contained in an attributively used participle phrase, the element het is usually omitted if the superlative is adjacent to the determiner. This can be seen by comparing (140d) with example (141a). When the determiner and het are separated by another phrase, as in (141b), het becomes obligatory again.

In the partitive genitive construction, equatives or comparatives can be used, but superlatives are blocked. We return to this fact, illustrated in (142), in Section 29.2.3, sub IE.