Lecture 5

Adjectives and their grammatical

properties;
Pronouns and their grammatical
properties
Verbs in English
 Adjectives and their grammatical
properties
Being a notional part of speech the adjective is characterized
by several criteria.

Semantically the adjective denotes properties of things,

sometimes qualities of things and their characteristic features.

Morphologically it is characterized by the possibility of a

certain property to have different degrees – the degrees of
comparison. The English adjectives have not got such
categories as number, gender, case.

Syntactically the adjective is used in the function of an

attribute and predicative (that is the second element of the
compound nominal predicate, e.g., she is beautiful). The
adjectives have some specific adjective-forming suffixes: -less,
ous, -ful, -y, -ite and some more.
Adjectives are usually divided into qualitative
(expressing a property directly, e.g., red, clever,
brilliant) and relative (expressing the property
through substance, e.g., golden, wooden). This
division of adjectives is not absolute as one and
the same adjective can belong to either of these in
different contexts.

As it has been said above morphological

characteristics of English adjectives are restricted
to only one grammatical category – that's the
degrees of comparison. The semantic foundation
of this category is different intensity of a property
of a quality. Adjectives have three forms of the
degrees of comparison: the positive (basic, initial),
the comparative and the superlative.
The way of grading in the English language
may be synthetic or analytical. The
employment of the synthetic way of
grading is restricted in English mostly to
base adjectives, e.g: big, bigger, the
biggest.

The analytical forms of grading are more

often employed in English than in
Ukrainian, e.g: important, more/less
important, the most/the least important;
interesting, more/less interesting, the
most/the least interesting.
Some groups of adjectives in English have no
grading. They are:
a) adjectives denoting a constant feature of the
noun referent (blind - сліпий, deaf- глухий,
barefooted - босий, nude -голий);
b) adjectives expressing the similarity of colour
(lilac -бузковий, lemon - лимонний, cream —
кремовий, ruby - яскраво-червоний, chestnut -
темно-коричневий);
с) adjectives denoting colour of hair or eyes (dun -
буланий, raven-black - вороний, bay - карий);
d) adjectives expressing the intensive property
with the help of suffixes or prefixes (bluish,
reddish, yellowish).
In English we recognize four classes of adjectives

Qualitative Relative Possessive Suppletive

and relative

cold, big, golden, Byronian, good,

small, red wooden, Shakespear better,
lead, ian best; bad,
copper worse,
worst; little,
less, least
As to the structure of adjectives they fall into three
groups:
1. Base (simple) adjectives, which are regular root
words: e.g., big,bold, clean, high, old etc. )
2. Derivative adjectives which are in English
regular stems: boyish, capable, despotic, etc.
Derivative adjectives are formed in English with
the help of the following suffixes: -al/-ial ; -able;
-ary; -ful (annual, capable, contrary, eastern
etc.)
3. Compound adjectives consist of two roots: the
English compound adjectives are ice-cold,
upright, ever-green, dark-red.
The process of substantivization of
adjectives in English is being distinguished:
a) wholly substantivized adjectives (a
native, a relative, a black/white,the Brown).

b) partially substantivized adjectives in

English have no plural or singular and
gender or case distinctions, usually they are
cases of collective adjectives, e.g: the poor,
the rich, the young; the English/French
(nation).
Pronouns and their grammatical properties.
Grammatical categories. Morphologically, pronouns
represent quite a diverse group.
1)Thus, the category of case is a property of the personal
pronouns, in which one may observe the distinct opposition
"nominative case - objective case“ (e.g., I- me, he – him). The
indefinite-personal pronoun one and derivatives with the
components -body and -one are also marked for the case
category, since they demonstrate the opposition of the
common and the possessive cases (e.g., someone’s car,
somebody’s mistake).

2)The category of number marks the demonstrative

pronouns (e.g., this-these, that-those), the indefinite-
personal pronoun one (e.g., one – ones) and the defining
pronoun other (e.g., other-others) and the reflexive pronoun
yourself (e.g., yourself –yourselves).
The pronoun as a part of speech correlates in English with the
following parts of speech as their substitutes:

a) with nouns: he/Pete, she/Ann, etc.;

b) Some classes of pronouns may also correlate (attributive
function) with adjectives (his, her, your, etc. book; the first/
second, etc. look;
c) Several pronouns also correlate in English with numerals
when they denote generalizing quantity: (some, few/a few).

Syntactic functions of pronouns are also diverse. The personal

pronouns, several interrogative pronouns, derivatives of some,
any, no and every perform functions peculiar to the noun,
whereas the possessive pronouns, some indefinite pronouns
take syntactic positions typical of the adjective.
This diversity of morphological categories and syntactic
functions leads to controversial views on pronouns as such
and also on linguistic units that should be treated as
pronouns. As a result, some scholars deny the very
existence of this part of speech. According to this point of
view, the words that are usually treated as pronouns should
be referred, depending on their morphological and syntactic
properties, to specific subgroups of adjectives or nouns.

Indeed, it is impossible to deny similarities between the

pronoun, the noun and the adjective but, on the other hand,
it is impossible to over­look the lexical meaning, i.e.
absence of a permanent reference, that makes pronouns
different from either of the two parts of speech. It is this
lexical meaning that unites pronouns of different types into
a part of speech, though they may share the rest of their
properties with other word classes.
English pronouns can be presented in the
following eight classes:
1.Personal : I, he, she, it, we, you, they;
2.Possessive : my, his, her, its, our, your, their, mine,
hers;
3.Reflexive :myself, itself, himself, herself, yourself,
yourselves, ourselves;
4.Demonstrative :this/these, that/those, such a, the
same;
5.Relative : who, what, which, whose;
6.Interrogative : who, whose, what, which, how much;
7.Indefinite and Negative :any, anybody, somebody,
nobody, none, nothing ;
8.Reciprocal : each other, one another.
Each of the eight classes of pronouns have
characteristics that follows:
1. Personal Pronouns (seven in English: /, he, she,
it, we, you,they) and eight in Ukrainian (because
of the existence of ти which was substituted in
English by you). All English personal pronouns,
except it and you, take their explicit objective
case forms (me, him, her, us, them).
2.English possessive pronouns may be of two types:
a) possessive conjoint (my, his, her, etc.) and b)
possessive absolute (mine, hers, its, ours, yours,
theirs.). The latter are used as attributes (the
friend of mine) or as predicatives (that book is
mine). English possessive conjoint pronouns
very often function as determiners, eg: He has
his hands in his pockets.
3.Reflexive pronouns (self-pronouns) in
English have singular and plural forms
(myself, himself, ourselves, themselves,
etc.). They correspond to the Ukrainian
себе pronoun
4.English demonstrative pronouns have
attributive function in speech. These
pronouns are this/that, these/those, this
same/that same, such a, such. These
English demonstrative pronouns agree in
number with the head noun: this day -
these days, such a book - such books.
5.Interrogative pronouns are used as noun-
pronouns (who, what, how many/how much;
хто, що, скільки) and as adjective pronouns
(which, whose; який, котрий, чий). They may
correlate with numerals (how much/how many?
— скільки?). English interrogative pronouns
have no number, case or gender distinctions
(except "whom" and "whose") expressing
respectively the objective and genitive case
form.
6. Relative pronouns in English coincide in their
form (structure) with the interrogative
pronouns. They perform the function of
connectors (e.g., I know what to do. He asked
who did it. )
7. Reciprocal pronouns (взаємні займенники) are
two in English (each other and one another) and one
in Ukrainian, where it exists in three gender forms
used in singular and plural as noun pronouns: один
одного, одна одну, одне одного, одні одних.

8. Indefinite pronouns (неозначені займенники)

constitute, as was already pointed out, a rather
controversial class. Some grammarians (R. Quirk, S.
Greenbaum, G. Leech, J. Svartvik) speak of "universal
pronouns" (each, all, every, the very) and of "partitive
pronouns" (some thing, anything, nothing, either,
neither, any, no, none, etc.). Hence, as indefinite can
be identified such pronouns as some, any, somebody,
anybody, someone, something, anything. They have
for their Ukrainian equivalents дехто, дещо, хтось,
щось, хто-небудь, що-небудь, який-небудь, будь-
хто, будь-що, казна-хто, казна-що.
As to their structure, English pronouns
may be:
1) simple (/, he, she, you, some,
which, what; etc.);
2) compound (myself, ourselves,
someone, somebody, nobody,
nothing;);
3) composite (І myself, this same,
somebody else, neither he nor she).
The verb is a part of speech that conveys a
grammatical meaning of an action. The verb can
be called the most complicated unit of a language,
the keystone of the utterance and the keystone of
communication in general.
The grammatical form of the English verb finds its
expression in synthetic and analytical forms. The
formative elements expressing these categories
are grammatical affixes, inner inflection and
auxiliaries.
Some categories have only synthetic forms
(person, number), others – only analytical (voice
distinctions). There are also categories expressed
by both analytical and synthetic forms (mood, time,
aspect).
Traditionally verbs are classified on two
principles: morphological (formal) and
semantical-syntactic. Morphologically
verbs are divided into regular, irregular and
a small group of defective verbs (modals). In
semantical-syntactic respect verbs are
divided, first of all, into notional, auxiliary,
linking and modal verbs.
This part of speech in English serves to
convey different kinds of activity (go, read,
skate), various processes (boil, grow,
obtain), the inner state of a person (feel,
bother, worry), possession (have, possess).
Due to these lexico-grammatical properties the
verb generally functions in the sentence as
predicate going into some combinations:
a) with the nominal parts of speech performing the
functions of the subject (or the object) of the
sentence, for example: The sun shines.The trees
grow.The student passed his examinations.
b) The verb goes into combination with verbs (to
want to know, to want to read;) or with adverbs (to
read well);
с) with prepositions (to depend on smb/smth.
залежати від когось) and also with conjunctions
(neither read nor write, to work and rest).
The main classes of verbs as to their functional significance: a) notional
verbs (go, ask, write) and b) auxiliary verbs. The latter split into
primary (be, do, have), modal (can, may, must, could, should, need,
etc.) and linking verbs (appear, look, become, turn, grow).
English lexical/nominal verbs split into two subclasses. These are
1) regular verbs forming their past stem and the past participle with the
help of the ending, -ed, -d or -t (dressed/worked, paid/said,
learnt/sent);
2) irregular verbs having their past stems and the past participle formed
by way of alteration of their base vowel (bind - bound - bound, take -
took - taken, begin -began - begun).
Some irregular verbs also have vowel mutation + the past
indefinite/past participle -d or -t ending (tell - told - told, keep -kept -
kept, think - thought - thought).
There are also some mixed-type verbs in English (show - showed-
shown, crow - crew - crowed).
A separate subclass of irregular verbs form the so-called invariables,
which have the same form for the present and past stem/past
participle, eg: cast — cast - cast, cost - cost - cost, let - let - let, put -
put - put, etc.
They are suppletive verbs are common, however ( be - was - were, go
– went).
The finite verb has six morphological categories which
are realized partly with the help of synthetic means
(inflexions) and partly through different analytical
means.
The categories of person and number are realized
synthetically (e.g., I read. He reads), whereas the
category of tense is realized both synthetically and
analytically (e.g. I worked. I have been working); the
category of aspect is realized in English synthetically
or analytically (indefinite, continuous, perfect
aspects:He speaks. He is speaking. He has siad it); the
category of voice is realized only analytically in
English (active voice and passive voice: He builds a
house. The house is being built).The category of
mood (indicative, imperative, subjunctive) is realized
synthetically and analytically (I understand you. Close
the door. If I had more time, I would come).