Theme 17. The adjective

Plan

1. The adjective as a part of speech.

2. The semantic classification of adjectives.

3. The category of comparison.

4. The syntactical functions.

5. The problem of the stative.

Adjectives belong to an open-class system. This class is open to new membership since there are productive word-building affixes: prefixes and suffixes. The units of this class are semantically diversified and can be subgrouped along different lines of semantic classification.

Semantically, adjectives are simple and complex, concrete and abstract. The word adjective comes from two Latin words: ad (= pertaining to), and jacio (= throw). Thus, adjective denotes a quality, a property of a noun it pertains to; it can describe, qualify, specify it. For example, green, red, round, young point out to properties easily perceivable in an object; the meaning of obscure, substantial, versatile is less concrete, generally descriptive, while the meaning of foolish, idiotic, clever, perfect, good, bad is, obviously, evaluative and its content is complex.

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

1. The lexico-grammatical meaning of property of a substance. It should be understood that by properties we mean different properties of substances such as their size (large, small), colour (white, black), dimension, position in space (upper, linear, inner), material (woolen, wooden, iron), psychic state of persons (happy, sad, furious) and other characteristics, both permanent and temporary.

2. The morphological category of the degrees of comparison. As regards the category of comparison the adjectives can be divided into qualitative and relative. The former have degrees of comparison; the latter have none. When forming degrees of comparison, one-syllable and two-syllable adjectives have synthetic paradigms; three-syllable and four-syllable adjectives have analytical paradigms.

e.g. large – larger – the largest

evasive – more evasive – the most evasive

good – better – the best

3. The characteristic combinability with nouns, which they modify, if not accompanied by adjuncts, usually in pre-position (a nice girl), and occasionally in post-position to the noun they modify (She was now president elect; six feet tall), by a combinability with a link verb, both functional and notional (is clever, rose red), by a combinability with modifying adverbs, mostly those of degree (a very nice girl), the so-called prop word (a nice one).

4. The typical stem-building suffixes.

There are adjectives that describe a person as a citizen of a country, or anything associated with it:

-ite – Israelite;

-(i)an – Russian, Korean, Indonesian;

-ese – Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese;

-ish – Finnish, Spanish, Swedish*.

There are adjectives that denote a quality of an object, or a thing as such, as typical of, or belonging to a particular field of knowledge, art, science:

-ic – poetic, scientific, linguistic, heroic;

-ical – analytical, chemical, musical.

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*See the table showing the nationality words in: Leech G., Svartvik J. A Communicative Grammar of English. – M., 1983. – C. 628.

In terms of lexical morphology, the adjectival suffixes are non-productive and productive, thus non-productive:

-y – silky, velvety, slippy, creamy, bulky, slinky, catchy, worthy;

-ish – foolish, childish, sheepish, mannish, outlandish, oldish, reddish, bluish, stylish, selfish;

-ly – motherly, sisterly, lovely, lonely, priestly, cowardly, daily, weekly, yearly.

It doesn’t mean, however, that there cannot appear words with such suffixes, they do appear, but productivity is concerned with a growing tendency in word-formation. From this point of view, adjectives in -ing are more productive now in Modern English: interesting, amusing, obliging, erring, sneering, sneaking, approving, disapproving, surviving, surrounding, surprising, stemming, twisting, warring, wanting, whopping. Many new adjectives may belong to colloquial speech being highly emphatic, evaluative, disapproving. -like is a productive suffix with a meaning of “similar to”: childlike, ladylike, animal-like, ball-like, shell-like, snakelike. Like is mobile enough and may precede a deriving stem in like-minded, becoming functionally equated with a prefixal morpheme.

-less is found to become highly productive: helpless, hopeless, hapless, meaningless, thoughtless, colourless, topless, treeless, friendless, senseless, useless, countless, sleepless, shameless, fruitless, speechless, pitiless, cheerless etc. – not all these derivatives are registered in modern dictionaries. Its opposite -ful is not so productive and the derivations are more familiar to a student of English: helpful, hopeful, colourful, useful, beautiful, meaningful, thoughtful, plentiful.

Some adjectives exist in two derivative forms, thus differing in style, or in an implication: beautiful – beauteous (= poetic), plentiful – plenteous (= formal), comic (= making people laugh, funny) – comical (= amusing, often because odd or absurd), poetic (= imaginative, said approvingly) – poetical (= belonging to poetry).

There are many prefixal adjectives, some prefixes are adjectival proper, like un- in unfair, a- in amoral, il- in illegal etc. Other prefixes belong to a deriving stem of a corresponding verb or a noun: co-operat-ive, super-natur-al. There are some common prefixal adjectives:

un- - unfair, unexpected, unjust;

dis- - disloyal, dissonant, dissident, distasteful;

a- - amoral, acute, abrupt, asymmetrical;

il- - illegal, illogical;

ir- - irrespective, irrelevant;

im- - immanent, improper;

co- - cooperative, co-existent;

mal- - malodorous;

pseudo- - pseudo-intellectual;

anti- - anti-social;

pro- - pro-communist;

super- - supernatural;

sub- - subconscious;

trans- - transatlantic;

uni- - unilateral, universal;

mono- - monolingual, monotonous;

bi- - bilingual;

tri- - tripartite;

multi- - multisided;

poly- - polysyllabic, polysemantic;

neo- - neo-gothic;

pan- - pan-African.

Compounding can as well be observed in adjectives: snow-white, white-headed, blue-eyed, white-hot, open-hearted, absent-minded, hard-won, new-found, awe-inspiring, ill-omened, all-embracing, all-in, all-purpose, all-important, all-merciful, all-powerful, their number in Modern English is growing. The degree of globality of a new unit, the degree of its lexicalization, and desemantisation of a deriving device is reflected in its spelling. Thus, all words in -ful are written as one word; some words in -like are written without a hyphen: ladylike, snakelike; while others are hyphenated: animal-like, shell-like. The degree of globality of a derivative is also reflected in the character of a stress it carries: homesick, ladylike, all-embracing, all-in.

As far as grammatical morphology is concerned, adjectives are said to undergo a kind of inflection in degrees of comparison. The positive degree shows that the quality exists but is not stated in any relation to a similar quality in any other being or thing; the comparative degree denotes a quality that exists to a greater degree than that observed in another being or thing; and the superlative degree denotes the greatest amount of quality existing among all beings or objects compared.

This statement holds true for many units of the class in question. The words of Anglo-Saxon origin and the words of one-syllable root-morpheme form their degrees of comparison synthetically with the help of inflections, thus in:

Positive degree Comparative degree Superlative degree

(unmarked) (with -er marker) (with -est marker)

able abler ablest

clean cleaner cleanest

There are no striking changes on the morpheme boundaries and no difficulties in deriving new forms in terms of phonetics, in writing there can be the omission of a vowel of a root: able – abler, or doubling a consonant: wet – wetter.

All derivative adjectives form their degrees of comparison analytically with the help of auxiliary words more, most, which, in their turn, are the forms of many: When the prince saw the Russian Princess… he kissed her hand. “Your picture was beautiful,” he murmured, “but you are more beautiful than your picture,” and the little Princess blushed. (O. Wilde) One night there flew over the city a little Swallow. His friends had gone away to Egypt… but he had stayed behind, for he was in love with the most beautiful Reed. He had met her early in the spring. (ibid)

The two methods are interchangeable with some words, as:

common commoner commonest

more common most common

There are many adjectives the comparative and the superlative degrees of which have to be learned from dictionaries and the best writers. The rule, as mentioned above, is at best variable. Both tenderer and tenderest, more tender and most tender are used and this variability is true of such adjectives as bitter, clever, cruel, happy, likely, lovely, silly, tame, true. The tendency is and ought to be – to make your choice comply with a rule.

Some forms are mutually suppletive, for example, positive good and comparative better, while better and best demonstrate greater formal similarity of a root.

It should be remembered that there may be a difference in meaning and use between two forms given for the same degree: farther and farthest are used to refer to physical distance; further and furthest are used to refer to a progress of thought or condition. In fiction both are used increasingly interchangeably.

There are adjectives that are not usually gradable, for example, derived from proper nouns: American, British; but very frequently they are: more English, more American. In the main, adjectives denoting absolute qualities are not gradable: absolute, boundless, circular, complete, definite, empty, eternal, enough, favourite, final, full, inevitable, mutual, perfect, perpendicular, round, square, sufficient, supreme, total, triangular, unique, universal, vacant.

Nevertheless, more than enough, more than sufficient are idiomatically fixed and not entirely illogical in Modern English usage. But this and similar cases do not belong to grammatical morphology proper and should be looked upon as lexical syntactic means of expressing comparison.

There are some comparatives that take to or of or some other word after them: anterior, exterior, hinder, inferior, interior, junior, major, minor, nether, posterior, prior, senior, superior take to; former, inner, latter, outer take of.

Comparison can be achieved by a variety of word-combinations, like in what follows:

1. very good indeed, the best of all

2. very good, better than 3, not as good as 1

3. good, better than 4, not as good as 2

4. quite good, not as good as 3

5. fairly good, not as good as 4

6. rather poor, better than 7, not as good as 5

7. bad, not as bad as 8, worse than 6

8. vary bad, not as bad as 9, worse than 7

9. very bad indeed, the worst of all

To point out the same degree one may use

as…as: This watch is as cheap as that one.

not as…as: This watch is not as expensive as that one.

not so…as: This watch is not so expensive as that one.

To point out to a lower degree, one may use word-combinations with less and least: This watch is less expensive than that one. This watch is the least expensive of all being on sale. A less degree is expressed not by a categorial form of the grammatical-morphological category of comparison but by a mere combination of separate words, like in very expensive and highly expensive.