1.5. Substantivisation of Adjectives
Adjectives
display the ability to be easily substantivised by conversion
(zero-derivation). Among such adjectives there are units
well-established in the system of lexicon (a
relative, a dear),
and new coinages (a
sensitive).
Among
the substantivised adjectives there can clearly be distinguished two
sets:
1)
the set which from the categorial point expresses constitutive
categories of the noun (the number, the case, the gender, the article
determination) and performs normal nounal functions.
2)
the set characterised by hybrid lexico-grammatical features (the
poor, the rich).
Such
words demonstrate incomplete presentation of the part-of speech
characteristics of either nouns or adjectives: 1) like nouns, the
words are used in the article form; express the category of number
(in a relational way); 2) their article and number forms are rigid as
they do not show the regular structural change (categorially
unchangeable); 3) the words convey the mixed adjectival-nounal
semantics of property.
Such
adjectival-nounal words are highly productive and idiomatically
characteristic of Modern English (adjectivids). They fall into two
main grammatical subgroups: 1) pluralia tantum (the
English, the rich, the unemployed, the uninitiated, etc.)
expressing sets of people (personal multitudes); 2) singularia tantum
(the
invisible, the abstract, the tangible, etc.)
expressing abstract ideas of various types. The words of the second
set are often referred to as partly substantivised.