Adjective. The Category of degree of comparison.

The adjective expresses the categorial semantics of property of a substance à each adjective used in text presupposes relation to some noun. Unlike nouns, adjectives do not possess a full nominative value. All the adjectives are traditionally divided into 2 large subclasses:

qualitative and

relative.

Relative adjectives express such properties of a substance as are determined by the direct relation of the substance to some other substance (e.g. wood – a wooden hut, history – a historical event). The nature of this relationship in adjectives is best revealed by definitional correlations: e.g. a wooden hut – a hut made of wood; a historical event – an event referring to a certain period of history.

Qualitative adjectives, as different from relative ones, denote various qualities of substances which admit of a quantitative estimation, i.e. of establishing their correlative quantitative measure. The measure of a quality can be estimated as high or low, adequate or inadequate, sufficient or insufficient, optimal or excessive (e.g. a difficult task – a very difficult task). The adjective functions may be grammatically divided into ‘evaluative’ and ‘specificative’. One and the same adjective, irrespective of its being relative or qualitative, can be used either in one or the other function.e.g. good is basically qualitative, but used as a grading term in teaching it acquires the specificative value (bad, satisfactory, good, excellent). On the whole, the number of adjectives which can be recognized as such by their suffix seems to be insignificant as compared with the mass of English adjectives. The only morphological problem concerning adjectives is, then', that of degrees of comparison.

The degrees of comparisonThe cat. of degrees of comparison is a system of oppositions showing quantitative distinctions of qualities.

We speak of 3 degrees of comparison Positive – comparative – superlative The positive degree is not marked. We may speak of a zero morpheme. The comparative and superlative degrees are built up either synthetically (by affixation or suppletivity) or analytically (with the help of word-morphemes more and most), which depends mainly on the structure of the stem. Some authors treat more beautiful and the most beautiful not as analytical forms, but as free syntactical combinations of adverbs and adjectives. One of the arguments is that less and least form combinations with adjectives similar to those with more and most: e.g. more beautiful – less beautiful, the most beautiful – the least beautiful. In order to prove that more beautiful is an analytical form of the comparative degree, we have to prove that more is a grammatical word-morpheme identical with the morpheme –er. 1.More an –er are identical as o their meaning of ‘a higher degree’. 2.Their distribution is complementary. Together they cover all the adjectives having the degrees of comparison. Those adjectives which have comparative opposites with suffix –er have usually no parallel opposites with more and vice versa. e.g. beautiful – more beautiful (not beautifuller),nice – nicer (not more nice) One must not forget that more and most are not only word-morphemes of comparison. They can be notional words. They are polysemantic and polyfunctional words. One of the meanings of most is ‘very, exceedingly’ (a most interesting book). The notional word more in the meaning ‘to greater extent’ can also be used to modify adjectives, as in It’s more grey than brown. More grey here is a combination of words. The positive degree does not convey the idea of comparison. Its meaning is absolute.

<== попередня сторінка	\|	наступна сторінка ==>
The Problem of the Category of Case in Modern Eng	\|	Substantivization of Adjectives

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