Ways of expressing attributes

An attribute may be expressed by different parts of speech:

1. By (a) adjectives or (b) adjectival phrases, which characterize the person or non-person qualitatively or express the speaker’s attitude.

a) The sand glittered like fine white sugar in the sun. I’ve never seen a better place.

b) He stood and raged within himself with sour despair, unable to move or say a word.

2. By pronouns or pronominal phrases, which help to identify or define persons or non-persons.

Here’s some money for you. Can you see those children of mine anywhere?

3. By numerals, ordinal or cardinal, which state the number or order, or serve to identify persons or non-persons, as in:

Robert has always been the first boy in his class. Is it part two of the book?

4. By (a) nouns in the common case singular or (b) prepositional nominal phrases, which characterize the person or non-person either qualitatively or from the point of view of its locative, temporal, or other features.

The nouns are always premodifying attributes, the prepositional nominal phrases are post modifying:

a) It happened on a December evening (декабрьский вечер).

The garden wall was almost ruined (садовая стена).

b) The new secretary, on promotion from the general office, was a widow of fifty.

He was a man of very regular habits.

In some cases the attribute and its headword form a closely connected unit, such as the continent of Europe (Европейский континент), the name of Brighton Kurby (имя Брайтон Кёрби), the village of Crowie (деревня Кроул). Although the prepositional group is a subordinate and characterizing element, modifying the first word, its informative value is much greater than that of the first element.

In structures of this type the semantic roles of the elements may be reversed: the first (subordinating) element becomes a modifying word, the second (subordinated) - the modified one, as in: his carrot of a nose (нос морковкой; не нос, а морковка), an angel of a girl (не девушка, а ангел), a hell of a noise (адский шум, шум как в аду),a jewel of a nature (золотой характер; не характер, а золото).

Though logically his carrot of a nose means that the nose is characterized as resembling a carrot, syntactically it is the word carrot that is modified by the of-phrase of a nose, the indefinite article performing its usual classifying function. The modified word is not always semantically acceptable as part of the sentence without the of-phrase, which shows the semantic dependence of the modified element on the modifying one. This, together with the fact that logical and syntactic relations are reversed, accounts for the marked stylistic effect of these structures.

High above the bank is another eagle’s nest of a castle.

5. By nouns or pronouns in the genitive case.

He caught the sound of the children’s voices.

Nelson had asked Mary’s father’s consent before proposing.

If the headword is omitted (when the sentence is elliptical) the modifying word should still be considered as an attribute.

Suppose those postcards are a lunatic’s?

6. By statives, although these are rarely used as attributes. They usually postmodify the headword, though may occur as premodifying.

No man alive would ever think of such cruelty. She gazed at us with an aloof air.

7. By (a) participles I and II and (b) participial phrases, characterizing the person or non-person through an action, process, or reaction.

a) He made his way down the creaking stairs.

They stood at the car being refuelled and watched the meter.

b) Captain Nichols dragged Strickland, bleeding from a wound in his arm, into the street.

Beside her stood a straw basket stuffed with many towels and a pair of beach shoes.

8. By (a) gerunds, (b) gerundial phrases, or (c) gerundial complexes. Gerunds generally characterize non-persons from the point of view of their function or purpose.

a) Her walking shoes were elegant (shoes which she wore when walking).

b) He would not run the risk of being too late.

c) The silence was interrupted by the sound of a door being banged.

9. By (a) infinitives, (b) infinitivel phrases, or (c) complexes, which characterize a person or non-person through some real or hypothetical action in which this person or non-person is or may be involved. Owing to the hypothetical nature of the action, an infinitive as attribute often imparts a modal shade of meaning to the action.

a) You are the one to blame (whois to blame).

b) He was not a man to experiment with acquaintance.

c) This is a problem for you to solve. (which you could/must solve).

10. By (a) adverbsor (b) adverbial phrases, which characterize a person or non-person through spatial or temporal characteristics, or through circumstances or facts concerning this person or non-person.

a) No sounds came from the quarters above.

The then Government did not respond to this just claim.

Somebody appeared on the upstairs balcony.

The most usual position of such attributes is to follow the headword.

b) Most people living in out of the way places expect the latest news from home with impatience.

11. By sentences used as a whole (the so-called “quotation nouns”). These are used mainly as hyphenated chains before the headword.

She looked at me with a kind of don’t-touch-me-or-I’ll-slap-you air.

It was a ‘You-must-take-us-as-you-find-its’ attitude to things, and it saved me a lot of trouble...

12. By a clause (then called an attributive clause) which makes the whole sentence a complex one.

Some called me by the name which no one here knew.

<== попередня сторінка	\|	наступна сторінка ==>
Objects to adjectives	\|	The position of attributes

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