THE CATEGORY OF COMPARISON OF ADJECTIVES
It is the only grammatical category of the adjectives in English. The category of comparison is constituted by the opposition of three forms of the adjectives: the positive, the comparative and the superlative. Thecomparative degree of the adjective is used to compare two things; the superlative to compare more than two things. The adjective expressing some quality without comparison is said to be in the positive degree. Arman is a tall boy. (no comparison) Timur is taller than Alexander. (comparison between two persons) Arsen is the tallest boy in his family. (comparison among all the boys of his family ) The comparative and the superlative degrees of comparison are formed in the synthetic, analytic and supportive ways. The synthetic way is of forming degrees of comparison is by the inflection - er, to one - syllable adjectives to make their comparative forms, -est to make superlative forms (short, shorter, the shortest),(simple, simpler, simplest). The analytic way, by placing more, most before the adjectives with two or more syllables (wonderful, more wonderful, the most wonderful).
Someirregular adjectives have double meanings: · far - farth er - the farth est / far – furth er - the furth est Further is the comparative degree of far a nd denotes something additional. Farther is the comparative degree of far and means a greater distance. Now it is common to use further in all meanings. Farther is not common except where distance is implied: Please, read further. He went to England for further studies. Further discussion will be held in the next morning. Almaty is farther from Russia than Astana. · late - lat er - the lat est / late - the latt er -the last Later and latest denote time: latter and last denote position. Later means more late in time. Latter is the opposite of former and means the second in the order of original mentioning. Latest means last up to now only. Last denotes the past time, the last means last of all.(final) I’d like to go by a later train. Have you heard the latest news? I met Zaure and Svetlana at the party. The former was very glad to see me, but the latter didn’t notice. · near – near er – the near est / near –near er – the next Nearest denotes distance. Next denotes position. The next means next in order. (following) Her house is next to mine. Who lives nearest to our University? The next stop is yours. · old-old er - the old est/ old-eld er – the eld est Elder, the eldest are used only of close family relations like sons,daughters,sisters, brother. Elder is not followed by them, and must be preceded by the Eldest means first-born. Older and oldest are used both of persons and things and denote age. Zhanar is older than Azhar. My elder sister is a professor. She is the eldest of children in our family. Almas is the eldest member of our club. This is the oldest pair of shoes I have. A few words formed by adding most as an ending to show a superlative meaning of adjectives. inner most outer most fore most top most further most upper most
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