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I will be silent as a grave.>I will be like a silent grave. Walker felt healthy.>Walker felt a healthy man. It
was sensational. > That fact was a sensational fact.
When used as predicatives or post-positional attributes, a considerable number of adjectives, in addition to
the general combinability characteristics of the whole class, are distinguished by a complemen-tive
combinability with nouns. The complement-expansions of adjectives are effected by means of prepositions.
E.g.: fond of, jealous of, curious of, suspicious of; angry with, sick with; serious about, certain about; happy
about; grateful to, thankful to, etc. Many such adjectival collocations render essentially verbal meanings and
some of them have direct or indirect parallels among verbs. Cf.: be fond of - love, like; be envious of - envy; be
angry with - resent; be mad for, about - covet; be thankful to - thank.
Alongside other complementive relations expressed with the help of prepositions and corresponding to
direct and prepositional object-relations of verbs, some of these adjectives may render relations of addressee.
Cf.: grateful to, Indebted to, partial to, useful for.
To the derivational features of adjectives belong a number of suffixes and prefixes of which the most
important are: -ful (hopeful), less (flawless), -ish (bluish), -ous (famous), -ive (decorative), -ic (basic); un-
(unprecedented), in- (inaccurate), pre- (premature). Among the adjectival affixes should also be named the
prefix a-, constitutive for the stative subclass which is to be discussed below.
As for the variable (demutative) morphological features, the English adjective, having lost in the course of
the history of English all its forms of grammatical agreement with the noun, is distinguished only by the hybrid
category of comparison, which will form a special subject of our study.
§ 2. All the adjectives are traditionally divided into two large subclasses: qualitative and relative.
Relative adjectives express such properties of a substance as are determined by the direct relation of the
substance to some other substance. E.g.: wood - a wooden hut; mathematics - mathematical precision; history -
a historical event; table -
tabular presentation; colour -
coloured postcards; surgery -
surgical treatment; the
Middle Ages - mediaeval rites.
The nature of this "relationship" in adjectives is best revealed by definitional correlations. Cf.: a wooden hut
- a hut made of wood; a historical event - an event referring to a certain period of history, surgical treatment -
treatment consisting in the implementation of surgery; etc.
Qualitative adjectives, as different from relative ones, denote various qualities of substances which admit of
a quantitative estimation, i.e of establishing their correlative quantitative measure. The measure of a quality can
be estimated as high or low, adequate or inadequate, sufficient or insufficient, optimal or excessive. Cf.: an
awkward situation - a very awkward situation; a difficult task - too difficult a task; an enthusiastic
reception -
rather an enthusiastic reception; a hearty welcome - not a very hearty welcome; etc.
In this connection, the ability of an adjective to form degrees of comparison is usually taken as a formal sign
of its qualitative character, in opposition to a relative adjective which is understood as incapable of forming
degrees of comparison by definition. Cf.: a pretty girl - a prettier girl; a quick look - a quicker look; a hearty
welcome - the heartiest of welcomes; a bombastic speech - the most bombastic speech.
However, in actual speech the described principle of distinction is not at all strictly observed, which is noted
in the very grammar treatises putting it forward. Two typical cases of contradiction should be pointed out here.
In the first place, substances can possess such qualities as are incompatible with the idea of degrees of
comparison. Accordingly, adjectives denoting these qualities, while belonging to the qualitative subclass, are in
the ordinary use incapable of forming degrees of comparison. Here refer adjectives like extinct, immobile, deaf,
final, fixed, etc.
In the second place, many adjectives considered under the heading of relative still can form degrees of
comparison, thereby, as it were, transforming the denoted relative property of a substance into such as can be
graded quantitatively. Cf:. a mediaeval approach -
rather a mediaeval approach - a far more mediaeval ap-
proach; of a military design - of a less military design - of a more military design; a grammatical topic - a
purely grammatical topic -the most grammatical of the suggested topics.
In order to overcome the demonstrated lack of rigour in the definitions in question, we may introduce an
additional linguistic distinction which is more adaptable to the chances of usage. The suggested distinction is
based on the evaluative function of adjectives. According as they actually give some qualitative evaluation to
the substance referent or only point out its corresponding native property, all the adjective functions may be
grammatically divided into "evaluative" and "specificative". In particular, one and the same adjective,
irrespective of its being basically (i.e. in the sense of the fundamental semantic property of its root constituent)
"relative" or "qualitative", can be used either in the evaluative function or in the specificative function.