Adjective as a part of speech in English and Ukrainian languages
1. Adjective as a part of speech: general characteristics. Grammatical categories of adjective In both languages adjectives as a class of lexemes are subdivided into qualitative adjectives which directly express some characteristic features and qualities of some objects or substances (якісні, що безпосередньо передають ознаку предмета) (e.g., large, white, heavy; великий, білий, важкий) and relative adjectives that express some characteristics bound with the relation to some other object or phenomenon (відносні, що передають ознаку, зв’язану з відношенням до іншого предмета чи поняття (e.g., former, wooden, silken; колишній, дерев’яний, шовковий). Both in English and in Ukrainian the division line between qualitative and relative adjectives is a conventional (умовний) one. The English language has a considerably fewer number of relative adjectives than in Ukrainian. Especially few are those adjectives that denote some material: wooden (дерев’яний), woolen (шерстяний), silken (шовковий) and some others. Meanings rendered in the Ukrainian language with the help of relative adjectives are very often expressed in English by nouns in the common case in the function of an attribute, e.g.: a stone house (кам’яний будинок), an iron bridge (залізний міст), the London museums (лондонські музеї), the Kyiv underground (київське метро). The peculiar feature of the English language is the existence of quantitative adjectives (кількісні прикметники): little, few (мало), much, many (багато). The Ukrainian language does not have such adjectives and the corresponding meanings are rendered with the help of adverbs or indefinite numerals (неозначені числівники: кілька, декілька, багато etc. present only in the Ukrainian language). The Ukrainian language in its turn also possesses a peculiar group of adjectives, not present in English. By their meaning these adjectives, called possessive adjectives (присвійні прикметники), express belonging of some object to this or that person or creature, from the name of whom they are created, e.g.: батьків, братів, сестрин. Андріїв, Ганнин, учителева, шкільне. The corresponding notions are rendered in English usually with the help of the possessive case of a noun (father’s (батьків), sister’s (сестрин)) or with the help of preposition + noun combination (of the father (батьків), of the sister (сестрин)). All the three groups of Ukrainian adjectives – qualitative, relative and possessive – have their own semantic and grammatical peculiarities. Qualitative adjectives are different in meanings. They can render: duration in space (протяжність у просторі: довгий, вузький, глибокий), in time (у часі: повільний, швидкий, довгий), spiritual or physical properties of living beings (духовні чи фізичні властивості живих істот: талановитий, інтелектуальний, незграбний, хворий, гарний), peculiarities perceived by sense perception organs (ознаки, що сприймаються органами чуття: гарячий, гіркий, запашний, твердий). Qualitative adjectives vary also according to their grammatical peculiarities. In majority of cases they have degrees of comparison (високий – вищий – найвищий); create pairs of antonyms (гіркий – солодкий, вузький – широкий); serve as word-building stems for abstract nouns (гіркий – гіркота, доблесний – доблесть) and adverbs with suffixes -о, -е (далекий – далеко, гарячий – гаряче); as well as they can be combined with adverbs of measure and degree (дуже холодний, завжди уважний, вічно молодий). According to their morphological structure adjectives are divided in Ukrainian into two groups: full adjectives (повні або членні) – these are adjectives with flexions, e.g.: певний, повний, and short adjectives (короткі або нечленні) – without flexions, e.g.: винен, годен, повен, певен. Short forms of adjectives are used in parallel with the form of full adjectives and only in the nominative case singular of masculine gender. They have lost their system of declension and thus are indeclinable now. In modern Ukrainian short adjectives are used mainly in the function of the nominative part of predicate (Скільки я вам винен? Будинок повен людей. Рад би ще раз побачити). They are practically not met in the function of an attribute (the exceptions are some uses in the language of folklore or poetry: ясен місяць, дрібен дощик, зелен сад) [5; 52]. English adjectives do not have any endings and consist of the “pure” base, so according to their structure they are similar to Ukrainian short adjectives. Nevertheless, the loss of flexions has not been reflected on their grammatical characteristics. Deprived of any morphological means of expressing syntactic relations, English adjectives still perform two characteristic for this part of speech syntactic functions – the function of an attribute and the function of a nominal part of the compound predicate. Whereas Ukrainian short adjectives, having lost their flexions, lost as well a part of their expressive abilities. The English adjective as a part of speech is characterized by the following typical features: 1. The lexico-grammatical meaning of “attributes (of substances) / quality (of substances)”. It should be understood that by attributes we mean different properties of substances, such as their size (large, small), colour (red, blue), position in space (upper, inner), material (wooden, woolen), psychic state of persons (happy, furious), etc. 2. The typical stem-building affixes -ful, -less, -ish, -ous, -ive, 3. The morphological category of the degrees of comparison (The absence of the category of number distinguishes English adjectives from adjectives in all other Germanic languages). 4. The characteristic combinability: right-hand connections with nouns (a beautiful girl), and the so-called “prop word” one (the grey one); left-hand connections with link-verbs (… is clever), adverbs, mostly those of degree (a very clever boy). 5. Its typical syntactic functions are those of an attribute and a predicative complement. The Ukrainian adjective is a notional part of speech which renders some characteristic of an object (but not that of a process – непроцесуальна ознака предмета) expressing it via the grammatical categories of gender, number and case. In a sentence it performs the functions of an attribute and a nominal part of a compound nominal predicate. Following is the comparison of the basic features of English and Ukrainian adjectives. 1. The lexico-grammatical meanings are essentially the same. 2. The Ukrainian adjective has a greater variety of stem-building affixes than its English counterpart. The so-called “suffixes of subjective appraisal” (as in дрібн есеньк ий, багат ющ ий, син юват ий, велич езн ий etc.) are alien to the English adjective (the only exception is -ish in whitish, reddish, etc.). 3.1. The English adjective does not have grammatical categories of gender, number and case, which were lost already in the Middle English period. In Ukrainian vice versa all adjectives are changed according to genders and numbers. Besides, all full adjectives (and we have the majority of them) have their own system of case endings. Similar to nouns, adjectives are changed according to six cases. Besides, according to the character of the final consonant of a stem they are divided into hard (тверда група: дужий, червоний) and soft (м’яка група: нижній, безкраїй) groups. In plural all adjectives lose the gender differentiation (родове розрізнення) and have similar endings in all three genders. All the mentioned categories of Ukrainian adjectives are expressed in a rather peculiar way. Speaking about Ukrainian nouns, their categories of gender, number and case are to this or that extent determined by the meaning of words; whereas in adjectives they are reflected only according to the form of a word which the adjective is combined with. Thus, the categories of gender (довгий – довга – довге), number (довгий – довгі) and case (довгий, довгого, довгому, etc.) of Ukrainian adjectives are merely forms of grammatical relation of adjectives regarding the modified words, the forms of adjective agreement with them (Отже, категорії роду, числа і відмінка в український прикметниках – це не що інше, як форми граматичного відношення прикметників до означуваних слів, форми узгодження прикметників з ними). English adjectives have lost any forms of coordination with modified words that is why it is clear that they have lost simultaneously categories of gender, number and case. The only category Ukrainian and English adjectives have in common is the category of degrees of comparison. Therefore, adjectival grammemesin English are monosemantic (i.e. having but one grammatical meaning), while in Ukrainian an adjective grammeme is usually polysemantic, e.g. the grammeme represented by розумна carries the grammatical meanings of “feminine gender”, “singular number”, “nominative case” and “positive degree”. Nevertheless, the synthetic comparative degree form (сильніше, красивіше, etc.) is monosemantic in Ukrainian as well. 3.2. In Ukrainian as well as in English the category of the degrees of comparison is represented in three-member opposemes, but there are some distinctions. a) The “positive degree” is unmarked in English, whereas it is marked in Ukrainian (compare: red, червон-ий). Taking into consideration that more than 90% of all adjectives in speech belong to positive grammemes, we may say that in overwhelming majority of cases the form of an English adjective does not signal to what part of speech the word belongs. In the Ukrainian language every full adjective is marked. It shows by its form that it is an adjective. b) The formations більш цікавий, найбільш красивий resemble the analytical forms more interesting, the most beautiful, but they can hardly be regarded as analytical forms since they are not in complementary distribution with the corresponding synthetic forms. Більш цікавий and цікавіший are rather stylistic synonyms. 3.3. In both languages there are qualitative and relative adjectives. In both languages relative adjectives and some qualitative ones have no opposites of comparison, i.e. they form the subclass of non-comparables. Despite the mentioned similarities there are some differences between the two languages. a) The proportion of relative adjectives is greater in Ukrainian. In English “common case” nouns often render the meanings of Ukrainian relative adjectives, e.g.: господарські витрати – household expenses, настільна лампа – a table lamp, etc. b) in Ukrainian there is a peculiar group of possessive adjectives (сестрин, Настин, мамин) having no English counterparts. 4. The combinability of adjectives is to some extent similar in the two languages. Yet, there are some differences. In English one can speak only of two levels of combinability: lexical and lexico-grammatical. In Ukrainian grammatical combinability is of great importance too. Compare: білий стіл, біла стеля, білих стін, etc. 5. In both languages the typical functions of adjectives in the sentence are those of attribute (white wall – біла стіна) and predicative or the nominal part of a compound nominal predicate (This girl is beautiful. – Ця дівчина прекрасна.).
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