The door opened and the young man came in./The door opened and a young man came in.

In the 2^nd case we can see that the central point of the sentence is a young man, which is new ( the person who came in proved to be a young man). While in the 1^st sentence the central point is that he came in. The central point corresponds to the semantic predicate, or the RHEME.

 the indefinite article expresses what is new, and the definite article expresses what is known already, or at least what is not presented as new.

16. The adjective. Degrees of comparison. Substantivization of adjectives. Adjectivization of nouns.

Adjective is a part of speech characterized by the following typical features:

1.The lexico-grammatical meaning of “attributes (of substantives)”. By attributes we mean different properties of substantives, such as their size, colour, position in space, material, psychic state of persons, etc.

2.The morphological category of the degrees of comparison.

3.The characteristic combinability with nouns (a beautiful girl), link verbs (…is clever), adverbs, mostly those of degree (a very clever boy), the so-called “prop word” one (the grey one).

4.The stem-building affixes –ful, -less, -ish, -ous, -ive, -ic, un-, pre-, in-, etc.

5.Its functions are of an attribute and a predicative complement.

Blokh: The adjective expresses the categorial semantics of property of a substance  each adjective used in text presupposes relation to some noun. Unlike nouns, adjectives do not possess a full nominative value.

Classification of adjectives. Хаймович и Роговская

With regard to the category of the degrees of comparison adjectives fall under 2 lexico-grammatical subclasses: comparables and non-comparables. The nucleus of the latter is composed of derived adjectives like wooden, Crimean, mathematical, etc.  These adjectives are called relative as distinct from all other adjectives called qualitative.

Most qualitative adjectives build up opposemes of comparison, but some do not:

a. Adjectives that in themselves express the highest degree of a quality: supreme, extreme

b. Those having the suffix –ish which indicates the degree of quality: reddish, whitish

c. Those denoting qualities which are not compatible with the idea of comparison.: deaf, dead, lame, perpendicular.

Blokh: 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).

!!! Substances can possess such qualities as are incompatible with the idea of degrees of comparison  adjectives denoting these qualities, while belonging to the qualitative subclasses, are in the ordinary use incapable of forming degrees of comparison (e.g. extinct, immobile, deaf, final, fixed).

Many adjectives considered under the heading of relative still can form degrees of comparison, thereby, as it were, transforming the denoted relative property of a substance into such as can be graded quantitatively (e.g. a military design – of a less military design – of a more military design).

 The adjective functions may be grammatically divided into ‘evaluative’ and ‘specificative’. One and the same adjective, irrespective of its being relative or qualitative, can be used either in one or the other function.

e.g. good is basically qualitative, but used as a grading term in teaching it acquires the specificative value (bad, satisfactory, good, excellent).

The category of degrees of comparison: Хаймович/Роговская:

The category of the degrees of comparison of adjectives is the system of opposemes (long – longer – longest) showing qualitative distinctions of qualities. More exactly it shows whether the adjective denotes the property of some substance absolutely, or relatively as a higher or the highest amount of the property in comparison with that of some other substances.

 ‘positive’, ‘comparative’ and ‘superlative’ degrees.

The positive degree is not marked. We may speak of a zero morpheme. The comparative and superlative degrees are built up either synthetically (by affixation or suppletivity) or analytically (with the help of word-morphemes more and most), which depends mainly on the structure of the stem.

Some authors treat more beautiful and the most beautiful not as analytical forms, but as free syntactical combinations of adverbs and adjectives. One of the arguments is that less and least form combinations with adjectives similar to those with more and most: e.g. more beautiful – less beautiful, the most beautiful – the least beautiful.

In order to prove that more beautiful is an analytical form of the comparative degree, we have to prove that more is a grammatical word-morpheme identical with the morpheme –er.

1.More an –er are identical as o their meaning of ‘a higher degree’.

2.Their distribution is complementary. Together they cover all the adjectives having the degrees of comparison. Those adjectives which have comparative opposites with suffix –er have usually no parallel opposites with more and vice versa.

e.g. beautiful – more beautiful (not beautifuller),nice – nicer (not more nice)

This is not the case with less:

1.Less and –er have different, even opposite meanings.

2.The distribution of –er and less is not complementary. One and the same lexical morpheme regularly attaches both less and –er: prettier – less pretty, safer – less safe.

Besides, unlike more, less is regularly replaced by not so: less pretty = not so pretty.

These facts show that more in more beautiful is a grammatical word-morpheme identical with the morpheme –er of the comparative degree grammeme  more beautiful is an analytical form.

A new objection is raised in the case of the superlative degree. In the expression a most interesting theory the indefinite article is used whereas a prettiest child is impossible  there is some difference between the synthetic superlative and the analytical one.

One must not forget that more and most are not only word-morphemes of comparison. They can be notional words. They are polysemantic and polyfunctional words. One of the meanings of most is ‘very, exceedingly’ (a most interesting book).

The notional word more in the meaning ‘to greater extent’ can also be used to modify adjectives, as in It’s more grey than brown. More grey here is a combination of words.

The positive degree does not convey the idea of comparison. Its meaning is absolute. Jespersen: the positive degree is, a matter of fact, negative in relation to comparison.

The comparative degree and the superlative degree are both relative in meaning (Peter is older than Mary – Peter is not old).

Smirnitsky: thinks that there is good ground to speak of 2 forms of comparison: the positive degree and the relative degree which exists in 2 varieties – the comparative degree and the superlative degree.

Statives.

Blokh:Among the words signifying properties of a nounal referent there is a leximic set which claims to be recognied as a separate part of speech, a class of words different form the adjectives in its class-forming features. These are words built up by the prefix a- and denoting different states, mostly of temporary duration. Here belong lexemes like afraid, agog, adrift, ablaze. These are treated as predicative adjectives in traditional grammar.

Scherbs and Vinogradov were the first to identify notional words signifying states and specially used as predicatives. They called the newly identified part of speech the “category of state“ (Russian words: тепло, зябко, одиноко, радостно, жаль, лень).

The term “words of the category of state” being rather cumbersome form the technical point of view was later changed into “stative words” or “statives”.

The part-of-speech interpretation of the statives is not shared by all linguists.

Хаймович/Роговская: statives are ‘adlinks’ (on analogy with adverbs), they are opposed to adjectives

Substantivization of adjectives. Adjectivization of nouns.

As we know, adjectives display the ability to be easily substantivized by conversion, i.e. by zero derivation.

Blokh:Among the substantivized adjectives there is a set characterized by hybrid lexico-grammatical features. On analogy of verbids these words might be called “adjectivids”.

The adjectivids fall into 2 main grammatical subgroups:

1.pluralia tantum (the English, the rich, the unemployed) sets of people

2.singularia tantum (the invisible, the abstract) abstract ideas

The opposite phenomenon – adjectivization of nouns – is also widely spread in English.

A noun standing before other noun can modify it. Eg.: speech sound, peace talks.

Here we can refer to the “stone-wall” problem, which has several approaches.

H. Sweet: the first element of the phrase is a noun

O. Jespersen: the first element is an adjective or at least approaches the state of adjective.

Э.П. Шубин: neither a noun, nor an adjective, but a separate part of speech – attributive noun.

Ilyish: a noun in a special syntactical function.

17. The Pronoun. The categories of case and number (Ильиш, стр. 66-72 + лекция)

The meaning of the pronoun as a separate post of speech is somewhat difficult to define. In fact, dome pronouns share essential peculiarities of nouns (he), while others have much in common with adjectives (which). This made some scholars think that pronouns were not a separate part of speech at all and should be distributed between nouns and adjectives. However, this point of view proved untenable and entailed insurmountable difficulties. The meaning of pronouns as a part of speech can be stated as follows: pronouns point to the things and properties without naming them. Thus, e.g., the pronoun ‘it’ points to the thing without being the name of any particular class of things.

As far as form goes, pronouns fall into different types. Some of them have the category of number (Sg and Pl), e.g., ‘this,that’. Some pronouns have the category of case (‘he-him, somebody-somebody’s’)

Function. Some pronouns combine with verbs (‘he speaks’, ‘find him’), while others can also combine with the following noun (‘this room’). In the sentence, some pronouns may be the subject (‘he’, ‘what’) or the object, while others are the attribute (‘my’). Pronouns can be predicatives.

There are two grammatical categories in the Eng pronoun: case and number.

1. Case. Some pronouns distinguish between 2 cases which are best termed nominative(or subjective) and objective. These are as follows: nom – I, he, she, we, they, who; obj – me, him, her, us, them, whom. A certain number of pronouns have a different case system, namely they distinguish between a common and a genitive case. These are ‘somebody, anybody, one, another’ and a few more. All other pronouns have no category of case.

The nominative forms I, he etc. are being gradually restricted to the function of subject, whereas the objective case forms me, him, etc. are taking over all other functions. This process seems to have gone further with the 1^st person singular pronoun than with the others. The case difference between who and whom is quite obvious disappearing. Thus the general tendency is clearly towards the disappearance of the opposition between nominative and objective in pronouns.

2. Number. The category of number has only a very restricted field in pronouns. It is found in the pronouns this/these, that/those, other/others. The method by which each of the words ‘this’ and ‘that’ forms its plural is quite individual and unanalysable from the viewpoint of the modern language (the question is one of the history of English). As to the pronouns ‘I/we, he, she; it/they’ as well as ‘my/our’ or ‘myself/ourselves’, it must be stated that there is no grammatical category of number here. These are separate words.

We usually find in grammars classification of pronouns into personal, possessive, interrogative, indefinite, relative, negative, conjunctive, reflexive and demonstrative. But some points in this classification are not grammatical at all. There is no doubt that the pronoun ‘something’ is indefinite in its meaning, but that indefiniteness of meaning is in no way reflected either in its morphological properties nor in its syntactical functions. So, we may say that the indefiniteness of its meaning is irrelevant from the grammatical viewpoint.

Subclasses of pronouns. The system of pronouns in modern English has a binary structure(it consists of two components, each having two semantic spheres – denotation and signification; the latter is characterized by no distinctions of gender, person, number). According to professor Stelling, there are two main sub-classes of pronouns, each of which is divided into denotation and signification.

1^st class: indefinite personal, personal, possessive and reflexive pronouns. The semantics can be defined through the indefinite personal pronoun ‘one’. It’s the meaning of generalization that differs the pronoun ‘one’ from indefinite personal pronouns ‘we’ and ‘you’. (One must do one’s best – On entering the building you will see a tower). There is also some difference in form: ‘one’ takes the genitive typical for nouns (at the end of the 19^th c. Nesfield even insisted that it is a noun ‘cause of its characteristics). Another pronoun with a most generalized meaning able to substitute a noun is ‘it’, but it denotes smth inanimate. ‘One’ can be opposed to impersonal ‘it’: ‘it’ doesn’t belong to the group of personal pronouns, is unchangeable (no plural). It is cold.

The pronouns it/one belong to the sphere of signification, they don’t have any distinctions as to animateness, person, gender. They reflect the situation in an abstract way. They reveal the dichotomy of objective and subjective. They stand apart in the paradigm of pronouns in English, they are above the level of denotation. Signification and denotation are not isolated, they are connected with the help of the element ‘it’ (impersonal ‘it’ – signification (reflecting the reality in an abstract way), personal ‘it’ – denotation (pointing out a separate object of reality)).

2^nd class: demonstrative, indefinite, negative, relative, interrogative and conjunctive pronouns. On the level of signification there are only demonstrative pronouns, all the rest are on the level of denotation, they discriminate person-non-person: anyone-anything, who-what, which (interrogative), who, which – that (relative), who-what (conjunctive). The link between signification and denotation is ‘that’ (signification – demonstrative, may point to any object; denotation – relative)