10. The adjective. The category of degrees of comparison.

The adjective is singled out on the basis of three criteria:

1. the lexico-grammatical meaning of property of substance (quality, attribute, state, etc.):long, wooden,

2. Morphological properties:

(a) derivational suffixes (-able, -al,-ish, -ive, -less, etc);

(b) the grammatical category of degrees of comparison;

3. Syntactic properties:

(a) the functions of the attribute and predicative / subject or object complement;

(b) combinability with

• nouns: fine weather, time immemorial

• pronouns: everything possible

• link verbs: seem true

• adverbs: awfully nice

• prepositional phrases: anxious about smth

• infinitives: difficult to read

Semantic and functional classification of adjectives:

qualitative (those denoting properties of a substance directly: great, cold, beautiful);

relative(denoting properties of a substance through relation to place,material, etc: northern, weekly)

quantitative: numerous, enormous, little, few, many, much;

Substantivation of adjectives

Full

• Sg & Pl number: a native – natives

• case: native – native’s

• definite, indefinite a native – the native

Partial

• the definite article;

• one number:

Sg: the unknown (abstract)

Pl: the brave (collective)

Approaches to classification of partially substantivized adjectives

• collective nouns (foreign linguists);

• adjectives (A.I. Smirnitsky: adjectives used without the head noun — elliptical NP);

• a separate part of speech – partially substantivized adjectives.

BUT! These words are not specific enough to be singled out into a separate part of speech. They form peripheral groups within Nouns or Adj.

(OR overlapping of the noun and adjective fields).

Degrees of comparison denote the degree of intensity of the given quality (only for qualitative adj.)

qualitative adjectives that DO NOT HAVE degrees of comparison:

• adjectives with a lexical comparative or superlative meaning: senior, junior, minimal

• adjectives with the suffix –ish denoting some gradation of quality: darkish, greenish

• adjectives denoting qualities not compatible with the idea of comparison: dead,childless, middle

The syntactic constructions of comparison denote:

1) equal degree of quality:

My job is as difficult as yours.

2) comparative superiority or inferiority: My job is easier/more difficult than yours. My job is less difficult than yours.

3) Absolute superiority or inferiority:

My job is the easiest/the most difficult of all. My job is the least difficult of all.

(4) sufficiency of quality:

My job is easy enough.

Specific forms of the adjective used in the constructions of comparisonEnglish

• synthetic (syffixes -er, -est):

louder – loudest

• analytical (auxiliaries more, most):

more exciting – most exciting

The problem of the «analytical» forms of comparison

• the words more and most have not lost their lexical meaning:

She is more beautiful – She has more beauty;

they can be contrasted to the words less and least;

more can be repeated for emphasis:

It was getting more and more dangerous.

more and most are not necessarily in complementary distribution with –er and –est:

nicer and more nice.