Brief contents of the course

Substantivisation of adjectives

In many languages adjectives can become nouns (ученый, рабочий, мороженое). This means of word building is called conversion or zero-derivation. Substantivized adjectives acquire grammatical features of noun – the plural form and the genitive case (natives, sensitives, cutes, relative’s). They can also have articles.
On the other hand, among the substuntivized adjectives there is a set characterized by hybrid lexico-grammatical features: the poor, the rich, the killed, the wounded. The have an incomplete set of the part-of-speech characteristics of either nouns or adjectives. Like nouns, the words are used in the article form; like nouns, they express the category of number: they have two subgroups – pluralia tantum (the English, the rich), and singularia tantum (the invisible, the abstract), but their article and number forms are rigid, not subject to change. This group is open, as this means of word building is productive.

Adjectivisation of nouns

A noun may stand before another noun and modify it: speech sound, peace treaty, business contract. The observation that these nouns lose the ability of forming plural and have articles proves that they possess the features of adjectives. They also have the meaning of property, not a substance, and they function as attributes. This can also be illustrated by the difference between such combinations with proper nouns as “Moscow’s theatres”, “Repin’s pictures” and Moscow region, the Tretyakov Galery. The second type clearly lost their substantival features.


Glossary of Linguistic Terms

1. 
   property – качество предмета
   
2. 
   permanent/temporary – постоянный/временный
   
3. 
   nominal – именной, предметный
   
4. 
   derivation - словообразование
   
5. 
   agreement – согласование (формы зависимого слова)
   
6. 
   degrees of comparison – степени сравнения
   
7. 
   positive/comparative/superlative degree – положительная/сравнительная/превосходная степень
   
8. 
   elative – елятив, омонимичная с превосходной степенью форма, обозначающая высокую степень качества
   
9. 
   gradual opposition – последовательная оппозиция
   
10. 
    grapho-phonemic complex – комплекс звуков и букв, имеющий грамматическое значение
    
11. 
    direct/reverse degrees of comparison (the inferiority degrees) – прямые/обратные степени сравнения (степени понижения качества)
    
12. 
    substantivized – субстантивированный, получивший признаки существительного
    
13. 
    conversion – конверсия, превращение одной части речи в другую, не сопровождающаяся изменением формы, а только изменением функции, значения и словоизменительной парадигмы
    
14. 
    rigid form – неизменяемая форма
    
15. 
    modify – служить определением, изменять смысл
    
16. 
    relative - относительное
    
17. 
    qualitative - качественное
    
18. 
    moderated/extreme quality – умеренное/крайнее качество