Descriptive attributes and restricting/limiting/particularizing attributes
A descriptive attribute is used to describe an object or to give some additional information about it. It refers the object to a class of objects with the same quality or property: I got a long letter which I considered odd. (classifying function)
A restricting attribute is used to single out an object from all the objects of the class. This object implies the idea of “тот, который”, “именно тот, этот”: The letters that I have received lately are all here.
All semantic groups of nouns take the definite article if they are modified by the restricting (limiting, particularizing) attribute:
n common nouns, countable: I met him in the principal street of the village. The storm we had yesterday was awful. The years we knew each other were the happiest in all my life.
n common nouns uncountable: He gulped down the water which his wife had brought him from the kitchen. The meat White Fang had stolen was very good. He was the courage and force of his father, the spirit and opportunity of his brothers, the hope of his children, the dignity and significance of the Cowper wood name. (Dreiser)
n collective nouns: The new furniture we have bought recently is very trendy and stylish. The people present were all very well dressed.
n Proper names: She was not the Mary of our youth. It was not the France of his youth.
As for the descriptive attribute, the nouns modified by it are used either with the indefinite article or zero article. That depends on the grammatical form of the noun and its semantic peculiarities: It is an exciting novel which is very suitable for staging. He was a man I would be glad to spend half my time in hell with. I hate stale bread. She put down the mirror with a feeling of hopelessness. I prefer cool weather to heat.
Special difficulties in the use of articles
1. with names of seasons: summer, autumn, winter, spring.
Summer is my favourite season. We stayed with them until spring. It was a rainy autumn.
When I met him it was late autumn. Early spring is not the most beautiful part of the season. Last year we had a late winter though they had promised an early winter. It was the autumn of 1942, and most men in London were in military uniforms. He won’t last through the summer.
2. with names of times of the day and night: day, night, evening, morning, noon, afternoon, dusk, twilight, midnight, daytime, sunrise, sunset.
Dusk fell without my noticing it. The sun set behind the hills and night came. It was a spring night, a warm night. By late afternoon the guests began to arrive. The rain had stopped and the night was starry. The morning of his departure was raw.
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Note: after the prepositions at, after, by, till, until, towards, past no article s used: Towards evening they went along to the restaurant. All her life she got up at dawn.
After the prepositions in, during, through the definite article is used: It snowed all through the night. Somebody came during the night.
3. with names of meals: breakfast, lunch, dinner, supper, tea, high tea.
He had lunch at his club.Hope is a good breakfast but a bad supper. Do you remember the breakfast in the park?
4. with names of diseases: He was certain it was not scarlet fever. I’m subject to flu.
5. With the noun “sea”: We saw a blue sparkling sea dotted with white sails. The sea was calm within the reef. He went to sea when he was a boy of thirteen. They found no men in the village, they all were at sea.
6. with the nouns “school”, “college”, “university”, “hospital”, “church”, “prison”: He is planning to go to university after he finishes school. The school is right behind the corner. I went to the hospital to visit my sick friend. He has been in hospital for a weak already. He goes to church regularly, he is very religious. The tourists stopped before a very beautiful church. He is in prison for murder.
7. with the nouns “bed”, “table”: They don’t need much: a bed and a table. All the family were sitting at table when the police entered the house. I go to bed very late.
8. with nouns denoting means of transport: to go by train, plane, boat, bus, bicycle. But: We went there in his car. I met him on the train.
9. with numerals (ordinal and cardinal) : He was the first to enter the room. The boy took a third helping of the apple pie. Have you read chapter 5? All the five brothers were very talented people.
10. before some adjectives that have a limiting force because of their lexical meaning. The most common of them are: same, very, main, principal, left, right, central, following, present, former, latter.
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11. the word-form mosthas some peculiarities: the choice of the article depends on the part of speech the word belongs to:
· the auxiliary word before the superlative degree-form of many-syllabled adjectives (the most beautiful)
· the adverb = very (This is a most difficult profession)
· the adjective, a quantifier in the meaning “большинство, в большом количестве”: In most cases you are right. Most people dislike him. We play tennis most weekends.
· The noun in the meaning “большинство, большая часть: Most of his friends are students. I have read most of these books/
Exercise. Insert articles where necessary. Define the part of speech of most.
1. … most children in this school are members of the school library. … most diligent pupils help the librarian in her work. They choose … most interesting books in the library and recommend them to their friends. 2. I want to read “A Farewell to Arms” by E.Hemingway in the original. They say it is … most interesting book. 3. The encyclopedia is … most useful book. … most people consult it on occasion. 4. The rose is … most beautiful flower. 5. This is … most beautiful picture in the book. … most pictures in the book are indistinct. 6. … most important books of reference are on this shelf. 7. This is … most popular play. 8. He is ...most popular playwright in this country. 9. … most novels by Russian writers are about our motherland. 10. For over a hundred years “Jane Eyre” has been amongst … most widely-read of English novels.
Adjective
According to the morphological composition adjectives are subdivided into simple (good, fine), derived (beautiful, dependent, documentary) and compound (coulour-blind, deaf-mute, well-known, heart-breaking, fair-haired).
The grammatical meaning – to denote quality or state of a substance.
The grammatical form is determined only by one grammaticalcategory: the degrees of comparison. It's a threefold opposition consisting of the three forms: positive, comparative and superlative. The are three ways of forming degrees of comparison:
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· synthetic method with the suffixes –er, -est which concerns monosyllabic and some disyllabic adjectives: nice – nicer – the nicest; happy – happier – the happiest;
· analytical method with the auxiliary words more and most which concerns polysyllabic adjectives: more beautiful- the most beautiful
· irregular method: good – better – the best, bad – worse – the worst, little – less – the least, many / much – more – the most, far – farther / further – the farthest / the furthest.
The syntactic functions: an attribute, a predicative ( = part of the compound nominal predicate).
As we can see the English adjective differs a lot from the Russian adjective. The latter besides the category of degrees of comparison has the grammatical categories of number (красный – красные), gender (красная, красный, красное), and case (красная, красной, красному, красным и т.д.) which agree with the modified noun according to the rules of Russian grammar.
The English category of the degrees of comparison doesn’t cover all English adjectives. Like in Russian some semantic groups of the adjective (relative adjectives) don’t form degrees of comparison due to their meaning: previous, middle, left, right, dead, woolen, wooden, former, latter, inner, upper, senior, junior and the like.
Though some authors for stylistic purposes can resort to unusual forms: You cannot be deader than dead. Todt was the deadest of them all. (E.Hemingway)
The paradigm of a simple adjective can be represented by the following forms
| positive | large |
| comparative | larger |
| superlative | (the) largest |
Of a polysyllabic adjective
| Positive | difficult |
| Comparative | more difficult / less difficult |
| superlative | (the) most difficult / (the) least difficult |
Of a relative adjective
| Positive | Wooden, synthetic, analytical |
| Comparative | ---- |
| superlative | ----- |
English adjectives as well as Russian ones can pass over into the class of nouns through the process called sustantivization. In this case they acquire most if not all the noun’s grammatical characteristics. In Russian: рабочий , молодые , прекрасное , сытый голодного не разумеет .
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In English: a relative, a native, a conservative, a Russian, a Chinese, the Chinese, the rich, the young, the brave, the useful, in the affirmative, in the negative, the short for Robert is Bob; What is the English for …? It is all for the best. Red is my favourite colour.
The reverse process, adjectivization of nouns is typical of English too: stone wall, peace talks, speech sound, goods van.
The usual position of the adjective is before the noun, still there are cases with the adjective in the post position to the noun: the only person visible; all the people present; from times immemorial; page ten, I’d like to read something interesting; there is nothing extraordinary, I’d like to speak with somebody very clever on the subject.
If the noun is modified by a number of adjectives, their order (succession) is more important in English than in Russian.
Generally the succession of adjectives before a noun is the following.
| 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | ||
| determiners | quality | colour | age | material | Nationality, origin | noun |
| A | luxurious | red | old | woolen | Turkish | carpet |
| A | bright | yellow | brand new | silk | Benneton | blouse |
If all the adjectives belong to the same semantic group, the order of such attributes is not relevant, it can be changed easily.Let’s have a look at the sentence from Thackery (Vanity Fair): Amelia Sedley had such a kindly, smiling, tender, generous heart of her own as won the love of everybody who came near her. – all the adjectives here are qualitative.
Adverb
The grammatical meaning – to denote circumstances or characteristics which modify or intensify an action, state or quality.
The grammatical forms are determined by the category of degrees of comparison which mostly coincide with the corresponding adjectives:
Good / well – better – best
Bad / badly – worse – worst
Quick / quickly – quicker .more quickly – quickest / most quickly
Loud / loudly – louder – loudest
The syntactic functions: various adverbial modifies (of manner, place, time, degree and some others): to speak aloud, to run quickly, then, there, outside.
The formal indicator of an adverb is the suffix –ly.
Still many adverbs coincide with adjectival forms: A fast train, to run fast, early, late, hard, long, far.
Some adverbs can be used both with or without the suffix, though their meanings may be absolutely different. Compare: hard – hardly, late – lately, near – nearly, pretty – prettily.
He works hard. / He could hardly say a word.
He came near. It was nearly closing time.
It is pretty dark. / The children were prettily dressed.
Sometimes adverbs with the suffix -ly are used metaphorically. Compare:
He sold his life dearly. / You bought those things very dear.
He is a highly educated man. / The airplane flew high above the city.
He loudly praised her work. / Do I speak loud enough?
He denied it flatly. / He fell flat to the ground.
The verb
The English verb presents a system of finite and non-finite forms / verbals (Infinitive, gerund, two participles: present and past) , which are also called verbals.
The grammatical meaning – to denote a process (actional verbs: to do, to make, to read, to speak) and state (statal verbs: to be, to exist, to lie, to consist)
The morphological forms – are presented by the categories of person, number, tense, aspect, correlation, voice, mood.
The syntactic function – the verbal predicate.
The category of number shows whether the action is performed by one or more persons or non-persons.
The category is neither universal nor homogeneous. It is restricted only to the following oppositions:
active voice
speak – speaks
am speaking - are speaking - is speaking
have spoken – has spoken / have been speaking - has been speaking
were speaking – was speaking
passive voice
am spoken – is spoken – are spoken
was spoken – were spoken
am being spoken –is being spoken – are being spoken
was being spoken – were being spoken
have been spoken – has been spoken
The category of person expresses the relation of the doer of the action and the speaker. It is restricted only to the following oppositions
Speak – speaks
Am –is – are
Was – were
Has – have
Shall – will
The category of tense expresses the relationship between the time of the action and the time of speaking. It is a threefold opposition, denoting present, past and future. So there are three tenses in English which find their formal manifestation usually in the auxiliary verbs ( am, is, are, do, does did, was, were, will, shall, have, has, had) or in some cases in the root of the verb (speaks, speak, spoke).
There is also a verbal form there in English which is very often called a tense: the so-called future-in-the-past. This is an artificial grammatical form used for some special purposes in grammar: to observe the rules of the sequence of tenses when transferring direct speech into indirect.
Each tense is represented by four verb forms involving such categories as aspect and correlation. Thus we have four present forms, four past forms and four future forms. Accordingly there are four future-in-the-past forms that correspond to the future forms.
The category of aspect shows the way or manner in which an action is performed. In English this category is constituted by the opposition of the continuous aspect and common (non-continuous ) aspect. In Russian the category of aspect is based on a quite different ground, it is constituted by the opposition of perfective – imperfective aspect (совершенный вид: что сделать? – несовершенный вид: что делать): сесть – сидеть, прочесть – читать, встать, стоять.
Just like all the other English grammatical categories, the category of aspect also has some restrictions as to the use of the continuous forms for some groups of verbs. The most common of them are:
· Statal verbs: to be, to have, to become, to remain, to belong to, to consist of, to contain, to possess, to own, to exist and others;
Note: She is being foolish (acting in a foolish way). I’m having dinner.
· Verbs expressing sensory perception: to hear, to see, to feel, to smell, to taste, to look (tired);
Note: The blind man is feeling his way with a stick. I’m not feeling very well today. She is seeing a doctor tomorrow. Why is she smelling her tea? (Do you smell smoke? The flowers smell sweet) Look! The cook is tasting the soup. (The milk tastes sour.)
· Verbs expressing emotional states: to like, to love, to hate, to envy, to fear, to care, to hope, to prefer, to want, to wish;
· Verbs expressing mental states: to believe, to forget, to remember, to understand, to think, to suppose, to consider, to expect, to mean, to know, to doubt, to find, to suggest.
The category of correlation shows time relation between an action and a certain time plane: present, past or future. In other words it shows how the action time is related to a moment in the present, past or future. This category is constituted by the opposition of the perfect to the non-perfect forms.
All the three categories are reflected in every verb form and in its name. Compare:
Present simple = present, common, non-perfect (works)
Past simple = past, common, non-perfect (worked)
Future simple = future, common, non-perfect (will work)
Present continuous = present, continuous, non-perfect (is working)
Present perfect = present, non-continuous, perfect (has worked)
Present perfect continuous = present, continuous, perfect ( has been working)
The category of voice (залога : действительный , страдательный ) denotes the relationship between the action and the person or non-person presented by the subject. There are two voices in English: active voice ( the subject denotes the doer of the action) and passive ( the action is directed towards the subject). He wrote a letter in haste. The letter was written in haste. The letter was posted by his son.
It is very important not to mix up the forms of the passive voice and the forms of the compound nominal predicates with predicative expressed by the past participle. Comare:
He is used to our climate. / This pen is always used by me.
It was very hot in the room because all the windows were closed. / The door was closed at 7 o’clock by the hall-porter.
The book is not illustrated. / The book was illustrated by a well-known artist.
The children were neatly dressed. / The children were dressed and taken for a walk.
Sorry, I am mistaken. / I am always mistaken for my sister.
I am very much obliged to you.
I can tell you that I was surprised.
His ankle is sprained, he can hardly walk.
The castle is situated on the slope of a hill.
The number of copies is limited.
The category of mood expresses the attitude of the speaker towards the content of the utterance.
There are three moods in English: the indicative (изъявительное наклонение), the imperative (повелительное) and the subjunctive ( сослагательное).
The indicative mood indicates that what is said must be regarded as a fact, as something which occurred or is occurring at the moment of speaking or will occur in the future.
All the analysed before tense forms are the forms of the indicative mood.
The imperative mood expresses a command or a request, a warning, a threat, and so on for somebody to perform or not to perform an action. It has no tense category: the action always refers to the future. The imperative mood lacks also the categories of aspect, correlation and voice distinctions. The forms of the imperative mood are expressed by the infinitive without the particle ‘to’(bare infinitive): Leave the door open! Don’t be late!
The subjunctive mood expresses unreal or hypothetical actions or states. The latter can be looked on as desired,, necessary, possible, supposed, imaginary, or contradicting reality.
I wish it were spring all the year round.
It is impossible that he should have said such a thing.
If it were not so cold I should go out for a walk . / If it hadn’t been so cold yesterday, I should have gone out for a walk. (But it was very cold yesterday and I stayed at home yesterday the whole day.)
It is necessary that you should go there.
The examples contain all the grammatical forms of the subjunctive mood the English verb can take to express the category of mood: were (past simple), had been (past perfect), should go (auxiliary verb should + indefinite Infinitive), should have gone (auxiliary should + perfect infinitive).
In Russian the grammatical indicator of the category is the particle ‘бы’ and past verb forms:
Мне бы хотелось, чтобы весь год была весна.
Невероятно, чтобы он такое сказал.
Если бы не было так холодно, я бы вышла бы на прогулку. ….
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