4. Noun: Article Determination

The category of article determination shows, or, determines the relations of the referent of the noun to the other referents of the same class. The article is a determiner, a unit which determines a noun, but unlike other determiners (the lexical means of determination: this, that, some, any, very, certain, kind of, etc.), it is so general, that it has become a grammatical means of determination in modern English. When no lexical determiner is used, a noun is obligatorily modified either by a definite article ‘the’, or an indefinite article ‘a/an’, or by a meaningful absence of such, otherwise defined as a “zero article”.

The definite article expresses the identification or individualization of the referent of the noun. The object that the noun denotes is taken as concrete and individual, or definite.

The indefinite article expresses classification, or relative, classifying generalization of the referent, which means that this article refers the object denoted to a certain class.

The zero article, or, the meaningful non-use of the article, expresses absolute generalization, abstraction of the referent denoted by the noun. It renders the idea of the highest degree of generalization and abstraction.

With uncountable nouns the absence of the article expresses not only abstract generalization, but also classifying generalization, because the uncountable nouns cannot be used with the indefinite article, which is still semantically connected with its etymological base, the numeral “one”.

So, the article is unit of intermediary status between the word and the morpheme, is a special type of grammatical auxiliary, and its combination with the noun as an intermediary phenomenon between the word and the word-combination.

5. Types of Grammars.

6. The Adjective

The adjective is the part of speech, expresses a quality of a substance. 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’. The cat. of degrees of comparison is a system of oppositions showing quantitative distinctions of qualities.

There are 3 degrees of comparison: Positive – comparative – superlative. 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 word more, 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.

Substantivized adj.have acquired some or all of the characteristics of the noun.(the plural form, gen.case) They can be wholly substantivized or partially.(some characteristics of a noun)