10_Adjective_Adverb

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10.

Adjective.

Adverb.

1. Adjective. General characteristics.

2. Adjective. The Category of Comparison.

3. Adjective. Substantivization.

4. Statives.

5. Adverb. General characteristics.

6. Adverb. The Category of Comparison.

Adjective.

The characteristic features of the adjective as a part of speech are as follows:

1. their lexical-grammatical meaning of attributes or we may say that they express property of things /persons/;

2. from the morphological view point they have the category of degrees of comparison;

3. from the point of view of their combinality they combine with nouns. To put it more precisely adjectives modify nouns but they can combine with adverbs (The sun rose extremely red.), link verbs (The horse is white.) and the word “one”.

4. the stem-building affixes are: -ful, -less, -ish, -ous, -ive, -ir, un-, -pre-, in-...;

5. their syntactic functions are: attribute and predicative

It is important to point out that in the function of an attribute the adjectives are in most cases used in pre-position; in post- position they are very seldom: time immemorial; chance to come.

According to the way of nomination adjectives are divided into: qualitative and relative.

Relative adjectives describe properties of a substance through relation to materials (wooden), place (Northern), time (daily), some action (defensive) or relationship (friendly).

Qualitative adjectives may be differentiated according to their meaning into descriptive (light, cold), denoting a quality in a broad sense and limiting (previous, left), denoting a specific category, a part of a whole, a sequence of order, a number. Limiting adjectives single out the object or substance, specify it and therefore can seldom be replaced by other adjectives of similar meaning.

H. Sweet divides adjectives into: attributive (e.g. a great man) and qualifying (e.g. great stupidity).

According to the evaluative function all the adjective functions may be grammatically divided into “evaluative” (nice, bad) and “specificative” (wooden, motherly).

According to their morphological composition adjectives can be subdivided into simple (new, fresh), derived (spotless, careful) and compound (deaf-mute).

The category of comparison of adjectives shows the absolute or relative quality of a substance.

The Grammatical Category of Degrees of Comparison

Not all the adjectives of the English language have the degrees of comparison. From this point of view they fall under two types:

1) comparable adjectives

2) non-comparable adjectives

The non-comparable adjectives are relative ones like golden, wooden, silk, cotton, raw and so on.

The comparable ones are qualitative adjectives. The grammatical category of degrees of comparison is the opposition of three individual meanings:

1) positive degree

2) comparative degree

3) superlative degree

The common or basic degree is called positive which is expressed by the absence of a marker. Therefore we say that it is expressed by a zero morpheme. So far as to the comparative and superlative degrees they have special material means. At the same time we’ll have to admit that not all the qualitative adjectives form their degrees in the similar way. From the point of view of forming of the comparative and superlative degrees of comparison the qualitative adjectives must be divided into four groups. They are:

1) One and some two syllabic adjectives that form their degrees by the help of inflections -

er and -est respectively,

short - shorter - the shortest

strong - stronger - the strongest

pretty - prettier - the prettiest

2) The adjectives which form their degrees by means of root-vowel and final consonant change:

many - more - the most

much - more - the most

little - less - the least

far - further - the furthest

(farther - the farthest)

3) The adjectives that form their degrees by means of suppletion

good - better - the best

bad - worse - the worst

Note: The two adjectives form their degrees by means of suppletion. It concerns only of the comparative degree (good - better; bad - worse). The suppletive degrees of these adjectives are formed by root - vowel and final consonant change (better - the best) and by adding “t” to the form of the comparative degree (in worse - the worst).

4) Many - syllabic adjectives which form their degrees by means of the words "more" and

"most": interesting - more interesting - the most interesting

beautiful - more beautiful - the most beautiful

Some authors treat «more/ the most + adjective» not as a lexical way of formation of the degrees of comparison but as analytical forms. Their arguments are as follows:

1. More and -er identical as to their meaning of “higher degree”;

2. Their distribution is complementary. Together they cover all the adjectives having the degree of comparison.

Khaimovich and Rogovskaya: “One must not forget that more and most are not only wordmorphemes of comparison. They can also be notional words. Moreover they are poly- semantic and poly-functional words. One of the meanings of most is “very, exceedingly”. It is in this meaning that the word most is used in the expression a most interesting book".

However, the combination «more/ the most + adjective» can’t be considered as an analytical form as:

1. these words retain lexical meaning:

1. they can be opposed to less, the least;

2. more can be repeated for the emphasis: : e.g. more and more difficult

2) these words retain syntactical (adverbial) relations with adjectives e.g. more attractive (how?)

Substantivization of Adjectives

As is known adjectives under certain circumstances can be substantivized, i.e. become nouns. B. Khaimovich speaks of two types of substantivization full and partial. By full substantivization he means when an adjective gets all the morphological features of nouns: 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.)

By partial substantivization he means when adjectives get only some of the morphological features of nouns, e.g. the adjective “rich” having substantivized can be used only with the definite article: the rich. Partially substantivized adjectives 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”.

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.

Adverb.

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 (H. Sweet, O. Jespersen).

The adverb is separated into a special part of speech because of the following facts:

1. Meaning: they express 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).

2. Form: they have the degrees of comparison.

3. Stem-building elements: - ly, -ways, -wards, ...

4. Combinability: bilateral combinability with verbs, adjectives, adverbs, less regularly with adlinks: e.g. He was hard asleep.

5. Function: Adverbial modifiers.

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.

According to the meaning adverbs fall under three subclasses:

1. qualitative

2. quantitative

3. circumstantial

1. Qualitative adverbs usually modify verbs.Adverbs like: badly, quickly, slowly, steadily, comparatively may be referred to this type of adverbs. They denote the quality of actions: Ex: Clay collapsed on the sand beside Cathie, a wet arm playfully snatching her towel away. I want to go home, she said determinedly.

The Qualitative adverbs are derived from the adjectives by the help of productive adverb forming suffix -ly. Like adjectives the qualitative adverbs have distinctions of degree. These adverbs can both precede and follow the verbs.

2. Quantitative adverbs show the degree, measure, quantity of an action and state. To this subclass adverbs like very, rather, too, nearly, greatly, fully, hardly, quite, utterly may be referred. Ex. She had told herself before that it would be foolish to fall in love with Rob. And she had finally done it. Her gaze trailed around the room again, stopping at the partially opened double doors that led into the parlour. Some part of her was walking with him because of that strange, intimate look they had exchanged - a look that Cathie would rather forget, but warmth was too fresh. J. Daiby.

If the combinability of the qualitative adverbs is bound with verbs only the combinability of the quantitative adverbs are more extensive: they can modify verbs, the words of category of state, adjectives, adverbs, numerals and nouns.

3. Circumstantial adverbs serve to denote in most cases local and temporal circumstances attending an action. Accordingly they are divided into two groups:

a) adverbs of time and frequency /today, tomorrow, often, again, twice .../.

b) adverbs of place and direction: upstairs, behind, in front of, ... Ex. They stood outside the door, giving me directions. Now and then they deliberately refused to jump up and find himself something to do when the unpleasant sensations clutched at him. She waited in front of the window and when he came down he thrust a small dark blue box into her hands. L.Wright

Thus, circumstancial adverbs denote the time and place the action took place. Therefore unlike the previous subclasses the circumstantial adverbs can occupy any position in the sentence. Some circumstantial adverbs can have the degrees of comparison: often, late, near and so on. Special attention should be given to the fact that some circumstancial adverbs may be preceded by prepositions: from now on, up to now, from there and so on.

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.

In accordance with their morphological composition, adverbs are divided into simple, derived and composite phrasal (a little bit, far enough). 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 compound adverbs, 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.

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”.