Lecture 12. The Adjective.
Lecture 12.
1.1. Adjectives: General Characteristic
Adjectives belong to an Open-class system. That is this class is open to new… The adjective (fr. two Latin words ad – pertaining to, and jacia – throw) expresses the categorial semantics of…
Subclasses of Adjectives
The adjectives are traditionally divided into:
Qualitative
Qualitative adjectives denote various qualities of substances which admit of a quantitative estimation. The measure of a quality can be estimated as high or low, adequate or inadequate, sufficient or insufficient, optimal or excessive (an awkward situation – a very awkward situation; a difficult task – too difficult a task; an enthusiastic reception – rather an enthusiastic reception; a hearty welcome — not a very hearty welcome).
The ability of an adjective to form degrees of comparison is usually taken as a formal sign of its qualitative character however, in actual speech… In order to overcome the of rigour in the definitions, an additional… 1) evaluative (giving some qualitative evaluation to the substance referent)
1. the basic form (positive degree) – shows that the quality exists but is not stated in any relation to a similar quality in any other being or… 2. the comparative degree form – has the feature of restricted superiority… 3. the superlative degree form – has the feature of unrestricted superiority.
In traditional grammar these words were generally considered under the heading of predicative adjectives.
Notional words signifying states and specifically used as predicatives were… On the analogy of the Russian category of state, the English qualifying a-words were given the part-of-speech heading…
Among the substantivised adjectives there can clearly be distinguished two sets:
1) the set which from the categorial point expresses constitutive categories… 2) the set characterised by hybrid lexico-grammatical features (the poor, the rich).