ADJECTIVE

The adjective expresses the categorial meaning of property of a substance, e.g.: hard work. That means that semantically the adjective is a bound word of partial nominative value: it cannot be used without a word denoting the substance which it characterizes. Even in contexts where no substance is named, it is presupposed (implied) or denoted by a substitutive word “one”, e.g.: Red is my favourite colour; The blouse is a bit small. Have you got a bigger one? When the adjective is used independently it is substantivized, that is it acquires certain features of a noun.

Adjectives are distinguished by a specific combinability with the nouns which they modify, with link verbs and with modifying adverbs. The functions performed by the adjective correlate with their combinability: when combined with nouns, adjectives perform the function of an attribute (either in preposition to the noun modified or in post-position if accompanied by adjuncts), e.g.: a suspicious man; a man suspicious of his wife; when combined with link verbs they perform the function of a predicative (part of a compound nominal predicate), e.g.: The man was very suspicious of his wife. Usually, constructions with the attributive and predicative use of the adjective are easily transformed into each other, as in the examples given. But there are adjectives that can be used only attributively, e.g.: joint (venture), main (point), lone (wolf), live (music), daily (magazine), etc.; there are adjectives that are used only predicatively (usually adjectives denoting states and relations), e.g.: glad, fond, concerned, etc.; in addition, the predicative or attributive use may differentiate homonymous adjectives or different lexico-semantic variants of the same adjective, cf.: a certain man - I’m certain that the report is ready; ill manners – I’m ill.

Formally, adjectives are characterized by a specific set of word-building affixes, e.g.: hopeful, flawless, bluish, famous, decorative, accurate, inaccurate, basic, etc. As for word-changing categories, the adjective had a number of reflective categories in Old English: it agreed with the noun in number, case and gender; all these forms were lost in the course of historical development and today the only morphological category of the adjective is the immanent category of comparison.

The category of comparison expresses the quantitative characteristics of the quality rendered by the adjective, in other words, it expresses the relative evaluation of the amount of the quality of some referent in comparison with other referents possessing the same quality. Three forms constitute this category: the positive degree, the comparative degree, and the superlative degree forms of the adjective. The basic form, known as the positive degree, has no special formal mark, e.g.: tall, beautiful; the comparative degree is marked by two kinds of forms; synthetical forms with the suffix “-er” and analytical forms with the auxiliary wordmore, e.g.: taller, more beautiful; the superlative degree is also formed either synthetically with the help of the grammatical suffix “-est”, or analytically with the help of the auxiliary word most, e.g.: tallest, most beautiful. The synthetic and analytical degrees stand in complementary distribution to each other, their choice is determined by syllabo-phonetic forms of adjectives and is covered in detail in practical grammar textbooks. Also, there are suppletive forms of the degrees of comparison, e.g.: bad – worse – worst.

In the plane of content the category of comparison constitutes a gradual ternary opposition. To be consistent with the oppositional approach, the category of comparison can be reduced to two binary oppositions correlated with each other in a hierarchy of two levels in the following way:

Degrees of comparison

- +

positive degreecomparative + superlative degrees

(absence of comparison, (superiority)

equality/ absence of equality) taller, tallest; more, most beautiful

tall; beautiful; bad worse, worst

- +

comparative degreesuperlative degree

(relative, restricted superiority) (absolute, unrestricted superiority)

taller; more beautiful; worse tallest; most beautiful; worst

On the upper level the positive degree, as the unmarked member, is opposed to the comparative and superlative degrees, as the marked forms of the opposition, denoting the superiority of a certain referent in the property named by the adjective. The weak member, the positive degree, has a wider range of meanings: it denotes either the absence of comparison, or equality/inequality in special constructions of comparison, e.g.: He is tall; He is as tall as my brother; He is not so tall as my brother. On the lower level the comparative degree is opposed to the superlative degree. The comparative degree denotes relative, or restricted superiority, involving a restricted number of referents compared, normally two, e.g.: He is taller than my brother. The superlative degree denotes absolute, or unrestricted superiority, implying that all the members of a certain class of referents are compared and the referent of the word modified by the adjective possesses the property in question to the highest possible degree, e.g.: He is the tallest man I’ve ever seen. The superlative degree at this level of the opposition is the strong member, being more concrete in its semantics.

The opposition can be contextually reduced: the superlative degree can be used instead of the positive degree in contexts where no comparison is meant, to denote a very high degree of a certain quality intensely presented, cf.: She is a most unusual woman (She is an extremely unusual woman); It was most generous of you (It was very generous of you). This kind of grammatical transposition is known as “the elative superlative”. Thus, the superlative degree is used in two senses: the absolute superiority (unrestricted superiority) and the elative superiority (a very high degree of a certain quality). The formal mark of the difference between the two cases is the possibility of indefinite article determination or the use of the zero article with the noun modified by the adjective in the superlative degree, e.g.: It was a most generous gesture; a sensation of deepest regret.

The same grammatical metaphor is used in Russian, cf.: умнейший человек, с огромнейшим удовольствием, etc.; it must be noted, though, that the Russian elative superlative is usually expressed by synthetic forms of adjectives, while in English analytical forms are most often used.

The quantitative evaluation of a quality involves not only an increase in its amount or its intensity, but also the reverse, its reduction, rendered by the combination of the adjective with the words less and least, e.g.: important, less important, least important. These combinations can be treated as specific analytical forms of the category of comparison: they denote what can be called “negative comparison”, or “reverse comparison” and are formed with the help of the auxiliary words less and least; the regular synthetic and analytical forms denoting an increase in the amount of a quality may be specified as “direct comparison”, or “positive comparison” forms. Thus, the whole category of comparison is constituted not by three forms, but by five forms: one positive degree form (important), two comparative degree forms, direct and reverse (more important, less important), and two superlative degree forms: direct and reverse (most important, least important).

The reverse forms of comparison are rarely studied within the category of comparison; this can be explained, besides purely semantic reasons, by the fact that reverse comparison has no synthetical forms of expression, and by the fact that the grammatical meaning of its forms is not idiomatic: the auxiliary word retains its own lexical meaning. Still, if the analytical means of direct comparison, whose idiomatism is also weak, are considered to be grammatical forms of the adjectives, there is no reason to consider the forms of reverse comparison free word-combination^[3].

Adjectives are traditionally divided on the basis of their semantics into two grammatically relevant subclasses: qualitative and relative adjectives. Qualitative adjectives denote the qualities of objects as such, e.g.: red, long, beautiful, etc. Relative adjectives denote qualities of objects in relation to other objects; such adjectives are usually derived from nouns, e.g.: wood – wooden, ice – icy, etc. The ability to form degrees of comparison is usually treated as the formal sign of qualitative adjectives, because they denote qualities which admit of quantitative estimation, e.g.: very long, rather long, not so long, long – longer - longest. But this is not exactly the case. First, there are a number of qualitative adjectives which have no forms of comparison because their own semantics is either inherently comparative or superlative, or incompatible with the idea of comparison at all (non-gradable), e.g.: excellent, semi-final, extinct, deaf, etc. Second, some relative adjectives, when used figuratively, perform the same semantic function of qualitative evaluation as qualitative adjectives proper and in such contexts acquire the ability to change their form according to the category of comparison, cf.: a golden crown: a relative adjective ‘golden’ is used in its primary meaning – a crown made of gold; golden hair: a relative adjective ‘golden’ is used in its figurative meaning – hair of the colour of gold; one can say: Her hair is even more golden than her mother’s hair. On the other hand, a qualitative adjective may be used in the specificative function as a relative adjective, specifying the property of some objects in their relations to the other objects, e.g.: a hard disk – the basically qualitative adjective ‘hard’ in this context specifies the type of the disk in relation to other types: hard disks - floppy disks. In such cases qualitative adjectives do not form the degrees of comparison. Thus, the grammatically relevant subdivision of adjectives should actually be based not on their general semantics, but on their semantic function: the basic semantic function of qualitative adjectives is evaluation, and they normally form the degrees of comparison; the basic semantic function of relative adjectives is specification, and they normally do not form the degrees of comparison. Still, when used in the evaluative function, both qualitative and relative adjectives form the degrees of comparison; when used in the specificative function, neither qualitative, nor relative adjectives form the degrees of comparison.

Among the words denoting substantive properties there is a set of words denoting states, mostly temporary states, that are used predominantly in the predicative function and are united by a common formal mark, the prefix ‘a-’, e.g.:afraid, afire, alike, etc. (cf.: the suffix ‘-o’ in Russian - холодно, тепло,весело, etc.) Their part of speech status is rather problematic. Traditionally they are referred to as “predicative adjectives” or a subtype of adverbs. In Russian linguistics such linguists as L. V. Scherba, V. V.Vinogradov and others state that these words constitute a separate class of words, a part of speech called “the category of state words”, or “statives”; their status as a separate part of speech in English is supported by B. Ilyish. There are some arguments, though, which may challenge this point of view.

· Semantically the statives have no categorial meaning of their own: adjectives denote not just qualities but, as was shown above, properties of substances, and that includes stative properties too; the statives are not at all unique semantically, the same meaning can be rendered by regular adjectives, e.g.:cases alike = similar cases.

· They have the same adverbial combinability and combinability with link verbs as regular adjectives, e.g.: The cases are absolutely alike.

· The similarity of functions can be demonstrated in coordinative groups of homogeneous notional sentence parts expressed by statives and regular adjectives, e.g.: Both cases are very much alike and highly suspicious.

· As with regular adjectives, they can be used in an evaluative function in a limited number of contexts and can even form the degrees of comparison, e.g.:These cases are more alike than the others.

· The prefix ‘a-’ can not serve as sufficient grounds for singling out this group of words in English, because in English there are statives which have no such prefix, e.g.: sorry, glad, ill, worth, etc. (The suffix ‘-o’ is not a unifying property of the statives in Russian either, cf.: жаль, лень, etc.)

· Besides, it is a closed set of words and rather a restricted one: there are no more than 50-80 words in this group; it is not characterized by openness, like all the other notional parts of speech.

Thus, we can infer that words denoting states, though possessing important structural and functional peculiarities, are not a separate part of speech, but a specific subset within the general class of adjectives.

At the beginning of this Unit the possibility of substantivation of adjectives was mentioned: some adjectives can transgress the border between the two classes and can acquire some features of the noun. Strictly speaking, substantivation is a type of conversion - a lexical word-building process of zero-derivation. When adjectives are fully substantivized, they make a new word, a noun, which is connected with the adjective only etymologically. Conversion of this type often takes place in cases of one-word ellipsis in stable attributive word-combinations, e.g.: a private from a private soldier, a native from a native resident. These nouns acquire all the forms of constitutive substantive categories: number, case, article determination, e.g.: privates, natives, private’s, native’s, a private, the private,etc. (Cf.: similar substantivation cases in Russian: рядовой, больной, etc.)

There is also a group of partially substantivized adjectives which are characterized by mixed (hybrid) lexico-grammatical features: they convey the mixed adjectival-nounal semantics of property; in a sentence they perform functions characteristic of nouns; and they have deficient paradigms of number and article determination (they are not changed according to the category of number and are combined only with the definite article). They include words denoting groups of people sharing the same feature – the rich, the beautiful, the English, and words denoting abstract notions – the unforgettable, the invisible, etc. The former resemble the pluralia tantum nouns, and the latter the singularia tantum nouns. They make up a specific group of adjectives marginal to the nouns and can be called “adjectivids” by analogy with “verbids”.

This type of word-building has become particularly productive in modern English, involving adjectivized past participles, which exhibit “triply” mixed meanings, e.g.: the newly-wed, the unemployed, etc. And these tend to acquire more and more substantive features in the course of time, e.g., one can say the newly-weds, or an unemployed.

ADVERB

The adverb is a notional part of speech denoting, like the adjective, property; the adjective, as has been outlined in the previous unit, denotes properties of a substance, and the adverb denotes non-substantive properties: in most cases the properties of actions (to walk quickly), or the properties of other properties (very quick), or the properties of the situations in which the processes occur (to walk again). In other words, the adverb can be defined as a qualifying word of the secondary qualifying order, while the adjective is a primary qualifying word.

The adverb is the least numerous and the least independent of all the notional parts of speech; it has a great number of semantically weakened words intermediary between notional and functional words; this is why its notional part of speech status was doubted for a long time: the first grammarians listed adverbs among the particles.

Adverbs are characterized by their combinability with verbs, adjectives and other adverbs, which they modify. They perform the functions of various adverbial modifiers: of time (yesterday), place (there), of manner (secretly), etc. The adverbs which refer to whole situations are defined as situation-“determinants”, e.g.: They quarreled again.

There are certain contexts in which adverbs combine with nouns and perform a peculiar function of mixed adverbial-attributive character, e.g.: the trip abroad, his return home, the then President of the US, etc. This is the result of the nominalization of syntactic constructions (see Unit 20) in which the correspondent adverb functions as a regular adverbial modifier, cf.: his return home ß he returned home; the then President of the US ß the person who was the president of the US then.

In accordance with their form, adverbs are divided into simple and derived. There are few simple adverbs, most of them are of a functional or semi-functional character, e.g.: more, very, there, then, here, etc. The characteristic adverbial word-building affixes are the following: simply, clockwise, backward, ahead, etc. The most productive derivational model of adverbs is the one with the suffix ‘-ly’. It is so highly productive that practically every adjective has its adverbial counterpart, e.g.: simple - simply, soft – softly, etc.; some linguists, for example, A. I. Smirnitsky, consider them to be not adverbs but specific forms of adjectives.

The other structural types are compoundadverbs, e.g.: sometimes, downstairs, etc., and stable adverbial phrases or composite phrasal adverbs, e.g.: upside down, at least, a great deal of, from time to time, etc.

There are certain controversies among linguists about the status of phrases like from above, before now, until then, etc. They are sometimes treated as stable adverbial phrases (phrasal adverbs), but this approach can be challenged, because the members of such word combinations are not semantically blended into an indivisible idiomatic unity. More plausible is the following approach: some adverbs are freely combined with prepositions and, since combinability with prepositions is characteristic of nouns, they make a peculiar set of partially substantivized adverbs (“adverbids”), i.e. their lexico-grammatical status is intermediary between adverbs and nouns.

There is a large group of adverbs homonymous with words of other parts of speech, both notional and functional. Some adverbs are adjective-stem conversives (zero-derived adverbs), cf.: a hard work – to work hard, a flat roof – to fall flat into the water, etc. Among the adjective-stem converted adverbs there are a few words with the non-specific –ly originally inbuilt in the adjective, cf.: a kindly man – to talk kindly. Since there are no other differential features except for their positions, these words can be defined as “fluctuant conversives”.

Some of the zero-derived adverbs coexist with the ‘-ly’-derived adverbs; the two adverbs are in most cases different in meaning, cf.: to work hard – to work hardly at all. If their meanings are similar, the two adverbs differ from the point of view of functional stylistics: adverbs without ‘-ly’ are characteristic for the American variant of the English language; additionally, there is some research showing that adverbs without ‘-ly’ are more often used by men than by women, cf.:He talks real quick - He talks really quickly.

Some adverbs of weakened pronominal semantics are connected by fluctuant (positional) conversion with functional words; for example, some adverbs are positionally interchangeable with prepositions and conjunctions, e.g.: before, since, after, besides, instead, etc. Cf.: We haven’t met since 1996. – We haven’t met since we passed our final exams. - We met in 1996, and haven’t seen each other ever since.

Adverbs should not be confused with adverb-like elements, which are interchangeable with prepositions (and sometimes prefixes) and when placed after the verb form a semantic blend with it, e.g.: to give – to give up, to give in, to give away, etc.; to go down the hill - to download, to downplay - to sit down, to bring down, to bend down, etc. These functional words make a special set of particles; they are intermediary between the word and the morpheme and can be called “postpositives”.

Traditionally, adverbs are divided on the basis of their general semantics into qualitative, quantitative, and circumstantial. The qualitative adverbs denote the inherent qualities of actions and other qualities; most of them are derived from qualitative adjectives, e.g.: bitterly, hard, beautifully, well, etc. The quantitative adverbs show quantity measure; genuine quantitative adverbs are usually derived from numerals, e.g.: twice, three times, tenfold, manifold, etc. The circumstantial adverbs denote mainly the circumstances of time and place (they can also be defined as “orientative”), e.g.: today, here, when, far, ashore, abroad, often, etc.

Taking into consideration various hybrid types of adverbs of weakened nominative force, it is important to subdivide adverbs on the basis of their semantic value into the following groups: “genuine”, or notional (nominal) adverbs of full semantic value and semi-functional (pronominal) adverbs of partial semantic value. Quantitative adverbs belong to the group of semi-functional adverbs by their own pronominal (numerical) semantics. Qualitative adverbs include, on the one hand, genuine qualitative adverbs, e.g.: bitterly, hard, beautifully, well, etc. and on the other hand, a group of semi-functional words of degree, quality evaluators of intermediary qualitative-quantitative semantics. The latter include adverbs of high degree (intensifiers), e.g.: very, greatly, absolutely, pretty, etc.; adverbs of excessive degree, e.g.: too, awfully, tremendously, etc.; adverbs of unexpected degree, e.g.: surprisingly, astonishingly, etc.; adverbs of moderate degree, e.g.:fairly, relatively, rather, etc.; and some other groups. Circumstantial adverbs are also divided into notional and functional. Notional (genuine) circumstantial adverbs are self-dependent words denoting time and space orientation, e.g.: tomorrow, never, recently, late; homeward, ashore, outside, far, etc. The functional circumstantial adverbs, besides the quantitative (numerical) adverbs mentioned above, include pronominal adverbs of time, place, manner, cause, consequence, e.g.:here, when, where, so, thus, nevertheless, otherwise, etc. They substitute notional adverbs or other words used in the function of adverbial modifiers in a sentence, cf.: He stayed at school. – He stayed there; many of them are used as syntactic connectives and question-forming functionals, e.g.: Where is he? I do not know where he is now.

Thus, the whole class of adverbs can be divided, first, into nominal and pronominal, then the nominal adverbs can be subdivided into qualitative and orientative, the former including genuine qualitative adverbs and degree adverbs, the latter divided into temporal and local adverbs, with further possible subdivisions of each group.

Like adjectives, adverbs are also subdivided functionally into evaluative and specificative. When used in their evaluative function, adverbs (qualitative adverbs, predominantly) distinguish the category of comparison and have five morphological forms: one positive, two comparative (direct and reverse) and two superlative (direct and reverse), e.g.: bitterly – more bitterly, less bitterly – most bitterly, least bitterly. Their superlative degree form can also be used either in the absolute sense (to denote absolute superiority) or in the elative sense, denoting a high degree of the property, e.g.: The youngest kid cried most bitterly of all. – The kid cried most bitterly. When used in the specificative function, adverbs are unchangeable, e.g.: We meet today; We came ashore.

<== попередня сторінка	\|	наступна сторінка ==>
XII. Say whether these statements are true or false. Correct the false statements.	\|	Contents

Не знайшли потрібну інформацію? Скористайтесь пошуком google:

Генерація сторінки за: 0.012 сек.