Сomparative Adjectives and Adverbs - Курсовая работа

It is useful to examine these forms and structures from the point of view of what makes them difficult to acquire for language learners and then move into effective methods and techniques to help learners to acquire these important forms and structures. бomparison can be expressed by a certain class of adjectives and adverbs. In both types of comparison there must be a standard of reference in order to state that one thing is superior, equal, or inferior in quantity or quality, or likeness. However, a good place to start, when teaching LEARNERSТАЩ comparison, is by means of adjectives and adverbs in their comparative form. Specifically, in English, the forms of degree comparatives are the inflectional morpheme {-er}, or a quantifier word form such as more or less before an adjective or adverb. The comparative is frequently associated with adjectives and adverbs because these words take the-er suffix or modifying word more or less (e.g., faster, more intelligent, less wasteful); it can also, however, appear when no adjective or adverb is present, for instance with nouns (e.g., more men than women).For example, perfect, impossible, and dead are adjectives which do not have degrees of the quality that they denote, i.e. something or someone cannot be more or less perfect, impossible, or dead. This type of use of an adjective has implications for learners, in that, many nongradable adjectives can have and gradable senses when their meaning is extended, such as in a metaphor. If an adjective or adverb has one syllable, or if the adjective has two syllables and ends in a final unstressed it takes the inflectional {-er} endings. This creates some fuzziness for the learner and a teacher would be well informed to explicitly have learners practice with suppleted forms and forms which do not follow the syllable tendencies outlined above or can readily alternate their forms. Use and meaning issues Doetjes states that it is generally the case that morphological inflections for degree combine most readily with adjectives while the periphrastic degree forms tend to have a larger distribution among lexical words found that the periphrastic more is used in many cases where the {-er} form would be expected.While adjectives play a large role in many languages - such as English - many other languages have no adjectives at all. The first role is to act as a predicative adjective, in which the adjective modifies a preceding noun as a predicate, linked by a verb. Other English adjectives, such as alone, may be used only as a predicative adjective, while attempts to use them attributively result in ungrammatical sentences. For example, using the adjectives red, little, and two with the noun books, most native English speakers would intuitively order the adjectives to form the sentence `The two little red books." To non-native speakers, however, it might seem just as intuitive to say `The two red little books." or even `The red two little books." both of which are immediately obvious as incorrect to a native English speaker. Many Native American languages, for example, use verbs to fill the role that adjectives play in English, so that rather than `The woman is short." we are faced with something like `The woman is shorting." Languages that use nouns as adjectives are often more comprehensible to speakers of English, since our sentence formations can easily allow for metaphoric description using only nouns, with a verb perhaps to flavor it, such as `The sun was a blazing inferno." instead of `The sun was hot." English also uses abstract nouns, for example to turn `An important statement." into `A statement of import.Some adjectives have, however, degrees of Б юmparis юn, which make part of the morphological system of a language. Latin, and German, where the adjectives have a rather complicated system if forms, but even f у юм Modern French, which h as preserved number and gender distinctions to the present day (Бf. masculine singular grand, masculine plural grands, feminine singular grande, feminine plural grandes "large"). By what signs do we then, recognize an adjective as such in Modern Eng1ish? Occasionally, however, though a suffix often appears in adjectives, it cannot be taken as a certain proof of the word being an adjective, because the suffix may also make part of a word belonging to another part of speech. In fa Бт we find the suffix - full in adjectives often enough, as in beautiful, useful, purposeful, meaningful, etc.Comparative constructions in English and other languages are well studied in degree semantics. A phrasal comparative involves a DP (or some other non-clausal material) as the complement of than, while a clausal comparative involves something that looks like a clause. There is a lot of debate in the literature about whether phrasal and clausal comparative are syntactically related.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

SECTION 1. ADJECTIVES AND COMPARATIVES IN MODERN ENGLISH

1.1 Adjectives and comparatives

1.2 Definition of the Term Adjectives

1.3 Grammatical overview of English Adjectives

SECTION 2. EXPRESSION AND FORMS OF COMPARATIVE IN THE LANGUAGE

2.1 Comparative constructions

2.2 The Syntax of Clausal Comparatives

2.3 The Semantics of Clausal Comparatives

2.4 Lexical way of expressing comparative Adjectives and Adverbs

2.5 Morphological way of expressing comparative Adjectives and Adverbs

2.6 Comparatives with Multiple Adjective

CONCLUSION

LANGUAGE SOURCE LIST