Pronouns, Numerals, and Statives PDF

Such words as native, relative, representative are fully substantivized. But there are cases of a different kind: the poor, the rich, the Chinese, the English, etc. They do not form a plural in -s; they have no possessive form; they cannot be used in the singular meaning and with the indefinite arti...

Such words as native, relative, representative are fully substantivized. But there are cases of a different kind: the poor, the rich, the Chinese, the English, etc. They do not form a plural in -s; they have no possessive form; they cannot be used in the singular meaning and with the indefinite article. Such adjectives are said to be partially substantivized. Working bibliography Иванова И. П. Теоретическая грамматика современного английского языка / И. П. Иванова, В. В. Бурлакова, Г. Г. Почепцов. М., 1981. С. 53–63. Прибыток И. И. Теоретическая грамматика английского языка / И. И. Прибыток. М., 2008. С. 53–63. Ilyish B. A. The Structure of Modern English / B. A. Ilyish. Leningrad, 1971. P. 58–64. 10. Pronouns, Numerals, Statives The grammatical status of pronoun as a separate part of speech is difficult to define. In fact, some pronouns share essential characteristics of nouns (e. g. he), while others have much in common with adjectives (e. g. this). The only feature which unites all the pronoun forms is the meaning of indication (deixis). Pronouns point to the things and properties without naming them. We usually find in grammars a classification of pronouns into personal, possessive, demonstrative, interrogative, relative, conjunctive, indefinite, negative, defining, reflexive, and reciprocal. There may be variations. For example, indefinite and negative pronouns are presented as a joint group of partitive pronouns. It is clear that this classification is semantic. As to the syntactic functions, some pronouns may be the subject (he, what), or the object in the sentence, while others are the attribute (my, any). Pronouns can also be predicatives. The class of pronouns is heterogeneous, and we can see it when dealing with the morphological features of pronouns. Personal pronouns distinguish between nominative and objective case forms (I — me; he — him, etc), while some other pronouns (e. g. somebody, 35 anybody, another) are characterized by a different case system, viz. they distinguish between common and possessive (or genitive) case. As to the grammatical category of number, it is found in the group of demonstrative pronouns (this — these; that — those). There are no other grammatical categories in the English pronoun: there is no category of gender. The pronouns he, she, it are not morphologically correlated. Thus she is not a form of the word he but a separate word in its own right. There are many examples in English pronouns of the same phonetic unit used to express different meanings in different contexts. So the question arises whether this is a case of polysemy, that is, different meanings of the same word, or of homonymy, that is, different words sounding alike. Consider, e. g. that demonstrative and that relative; who interrogative and who relative; which interrogative and which relative; myself reflexive and myself intensive (non-reflexive). The problem with that seems to be the easiest of all, as we know about the plural form of the demonstrative that. Hence there are two different pronouns: that relative and that/those demonstrative. With the other pronouns given above no criterion of this kind can be applied, as they do not have any special plural form. We have to rely on meaning and syntactic functions. The limits of the pronoun class are difficult to define. There are words which have some pronominal features without being full pronouns or even have other features which are not pronominal at all. We can take the words much, many, little, few as a case in point. They are similar in functions and compatibility to pronouns (cf.: many children / some children; many of them / some of them). However, they have degrees of comparison (many / more / the most), which brings them together with adjectives. On the other hand, in their meaning they are closer to numerals and are even referred to as quantifiers. Thus we are to state that much, many, little, few are a sort of hybrids sharing features of adjectives, pronouns, and numerals. Numerals have the categorical meaning of number (both cardinal and ordinal numerals). As to the formal distinctions, there is a narrow set of simple numerals; there are specific forms of composition for 36 compound numerals; there are also specific suffixal forms of derivation. But there are no morphological categories to discuss in numerals. There is no category of number, nor of case. So there is only the function of numerals to be considered and also the possibility of substantivization. The most characteristic function of numerals is that of an attribute preceding its noun. However, in the anaphoric usage, numerals can perform substantive functions in the sentence, those of subject, object, and predicative (cf.: we are seven; one is missing; after a minute or two). Ordinal numerals used as denominators of fractions are fully substantivized and have the morphological form of plurality (e. g. two thirds, three sevenths, etc). Notional words signifying states and specifically used as predicatives were first described as a separate part of speech in the Russian language by L. V. Shcherba and V. V. Vinogradov. The two academics called the newly identified part of speech the “category of state”. Here belong the Russian words of the type тепло, легко, одиноко and also жаль, лень, etc. On the analogy of the Russian “category of state” the English qualifying a-words of the type asleep, afraid, aware, afloat, etc, were subjected to a lixico-grammatical analysis and given the heading “the words of the category of state”, or “the stative words”, or “the statives” for short. The analysis was first made by B. A. Ilyish and later continued by B. S. Khaimovich, B. I. Rogovskaya and some other scholars. The arguments for identifying this class of words as a part of speech separate of adjectives are as follows: 1) The statives are opposed to adjectives on a semantic basis since adjectives denote qualities or properties and statives denote states. 2) In the formal aspect, statives are characterized by the specific prefix a-; besides, they do not have the degrees of comparison. 3) The combinability of statives is different from that of adjectives as they are not used in prepositional attributive function. They are typically used as predicatives in the sentence. The first scholar who undertook the reconsideration of the grammatical status of the stative and disclosed its fundamental relationship with the adjective was L. S. Barkhudarov; his view was 37 supported by M. Y. Blokh and I. P. Ivanova. They put forward the following contra-arguments: 1) The basic meaning expressed by the stative can be formulated as “stative property”. In this respect statives do not fundamentally differ from classical adjectives. For example, both can denote the psychic state of a person (cf. afraid, aware, curious, happy), or the physical state of a person (cf. afoot, astir, sound, healthy, hungry). 2) As to the set-forming prefix a-, it can hardly serve as a formal basis of the part-of-speech identification of statives because it is nonproductive and has been fused with the root-morpheme in the course of the English language history (e. g. aware, afraid, etc). Statives do not take the suffixal forms of the degrees of comparison, but, like many adjectives, they are capable of expressing comparison by means of more and most (e. g. Jack was the one most aware of the delicate situation). 3) Functionally, statives are not used in attributive preposition, but like adjectives they are use with link-verbs and with nouns in postposition (e. g. The household was all astir / The household was all active; It was strange to see the household astir / It was strange to see the household active). Namely, the two basic functions of the statives are the predicative (as a rule) and the postpositional attribute (occasionally). There are adjectives which exhibit the same functional properties (e. g. ill ). The proponents of this view consider the stative-words to be a specific group of adjectives. Working bibliography Бархударов Л. С. Очерки по морфологии современного английского языка / Л. С. Бархударов. М., 1975. С. 49–57. Иванова И. П. Теоретическая грамматика современного английского языка / И. П. Иванова, В. В. Бурлакова, Г. Г. Почепцов. М., 1981. С. 39–45. Прибыток И. И. Теоретическая грамматика английского языка / И. И. Прибыток. М., 2008. С. 66 67. Ilyish B. A. The Structure of Modern English / B. A. Ilyish. Leningrad, 1971. P. 66–75. 38