Is She Superior? - Grammar

Is She Superior?

IRENE ( to Monica) : She may be our superior but her work isn’t superior to ours!

Should Irene have said : “..her work isn’t superior than ours? After all, this is a comparison and than is used in constructions such as Her work is better, more accurate, neater than ours.

Irene is correct. It is superior to. The reason is that ‘superior’ is different from the adjectives mentioned above. The adjective connected with ‘better’ is ‘good’ (good : better) ; ‘neater’ is realted to ‘neat’ (neat : neater).

‘Superior’ is not connected to any other form in this way. Its meaning already implies a comparison. Therefore it does not follow the usual comparison construction with than but is followed by to:

“This computer is superior to ours.”

“They tried to persuade May to join in a rather dishonest scheme but she’s superior to that kind of thing.”

But you are superior in something, e.g.

“Federer is superior in strength to Nadal.”

The noun ‘superiority’ behaves in a similar way to ‘superior’, e.g.

“Federer’s superiority in strength is obvious. He demonstrates his superiority to the other tennis players.”

However, somebody is ‘the superior of other’, e.g.

“Both applicants seem to be excellent but I think Alan is the superior of the two.”

‘Inferior’, the opposite of   ‘superior’, is followed by the same prepositions, e.g.

“She always feels inferior to her colleagues.”

“This product is certainly inferior in quality to the one you showed me earlier.”

Another two adjectives which are followed by  to  are ‘equal’ and ‘parallel’:

“Fred thinks nobody is equal to him.”

“The road runs parallel to the river.”

Just as something can’t be ‘more superior’ than something else, it can’t be ‘more equal’ or ‘more parallel’.