16. The Adjective

Despite the difference of opinion on what words belong to the group of adjectives all grammarians unanimously hold that the adjective forms a separate part of speech.

The adjective has the following semantic, morphological and syntactic characteristics: The adjective expresses a property of a substance. The only morphological character­istic is that of degrees of comparison. The adjective may be used as an attribute or as a predicative (She is stopping at one of the hotels in town. The morning was windy and sharp).

According to their meaning and grammatical character­istics adjectives are usually divided into two classes – qualitative and relative adjectives. Qualitative adjectives denote properties of a substance directly (large, warm, difficult, etc.). Most qualitative adjectives have degrees of comparison.

Relative adjectives express properties of a substance through their relation to materials (woollen, wooden), to place (German, European), to time (weekly, monthly), to some action (prepara­tory, circular). Relative adjectives have no degrees of comparison. Their number in English is limited. In addition to the two classes some linguists distinguish a third class – quantitative adjectives – which denote quanti­ty. Here belong such words as "little, few, much, many".

The adjective in English has no category of gender, number or case. The adjective in Old English had these categories but lost them in Middle English. The only gram­matical category characteristic of the adjective in English is the category of comparison. Qualitative adjectives have three degrees of comparison - the positive (long, difficult) comparative (longer, more difficult) and superlative (longest, most difficult). There are three ways of forming degrees of comparison: the synthetic, analytic and suppletive ways.

17. The Pronoun

Pronouns are words which indicate things and properties of things without naming or describing them.

Most Anglicists have defined the pronoun as a word used instead of a noun or an adjective. Although pronouns have the syntactical functions of nouns and adjectives they differ from nouns and adjectives in meaning.

Pronouns have a very general, relative meaning; from a purely logical point of view they may be defined as general nouns and adjectives.

As some pronouns have the peculiarities of the noun, others the peculiarities of the adjective, doubt has been expressed as to whether the pronoun is a separate part of speech at all. In the opinion of some linguists pronouns should belong to the c]ass of either nouns or adjectives.

Some pronouns have the grammatical category of case. However the case system of pronouns differs from that of nouns. Some pronouns (personal pronouns, the interrogative and conjunctive pronoun "who") distinguish between the nominative and the objective case, some pronouns (recipro­cal pronouns, the indefinite pronouns "somebody, -one, anybody, -one, nobody, no one, other, another, one") have this common and the genitive (possessive) case. All other pro­nouns have no category of case whatsoever.

There are only a few pronouns which have the category of number: singular and plural. It is found in demonstrative pronouns and the indefinite pronouns "one" and "other". There is no grammatical category of number in personal and possessive pronouns because number is expressed here by different words. "

Syntactic characteristics. Although pronouns resemble nouns they have some peculiar features by which they differ from nouns.

Pronouns differ from nouns in that they cannot be modi­fied by adjectives. Phrases like "poor me" are rare. Pro­nouns cannot be preceded by any article or be modified by a prepositional phrase. Pronouns can be used predicatively but only with "it" as the subject of the sentence: It's me.

Similar to nouns pronouns can be the subject or the object of the sentence: I am reading. Charles can do this.

The function of adjective-pronouns is that of an attri­bute: Give me some sugar.