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well, glad, sorry, worth (while), subject (to), due (to), underway, and some others. On the other hand, among
the basic statives we find such as can hardly be analysed into a genuine combination of the type "prefix + root",
because their morphemic parts have become fused into one indivisible unit in the course of language history,
e.g. aware, afraid, aloof.
Thus, the undertaken semantic and functional analysis shows that statives, though forming a unified set of
words, do not constitute a separate lexemic class existing in language on exactly the same footing as the noun,
the verb, the adjective, the adverb; rather it should be looked upon as a subclass within the general class of
adjectives. It is essentially an adjectival subclass, because, due to their peculiar features, statives are not directly
opposed to the notional parts of speech taken together, but are quite particularly opposed to the rest of
adjectives. It means that the general subcategorization of the class of adjectives should be effected at the two
levels: at the upper level the class will be divided into the subclass of stative adjectives and common adjectives;
at the lower level the common adjectives fall into qualitative and relative, which division has been discussed in
the foregoing paragraph.
As we see, our final conclusion about the lexico-grammatical nature of statives appears to have returned
them into the lexemic domain in which they were placed by traditional grammar and from which they were
alienated in the course of subsequent linguistic investigations. A question then arises, whether these
investigations, as well as the discussions accompanying them, have served any rational purpose at all.
The answer to this question, though, can only be given in the energetic affirmative. Indeed, all the detailed
studies of statives undertaken by quite a few scholars, all the discussions concerning their systemic location
and other related matters have produced very useful results, both theoretical and practical.
The traditional view of the stative was not supported by any special analysis, it was formed on the grounds
of mere surface analogies and outer correlations. The later study of statives resulted in the exposition of their
inner properties, in the discovery of their historical productivity as a subclass, in their systemic description on
the lines of competent inter-class and inter-level comparisons. And it is due to the undertaken investigations
(which certainly will be continued) that we are now in a position, though having rejected the fundamental
separation of the stative from the adjective, to name the subclass of statives as one of the peculiar, idiomatic
lexemic features of Modem English.
§ 4. As is widely known, adjectives display the ability to be easily substantivized by conversion, i.e. by
zero-derivation. Among the noun-converted adjectives we find both old units, well-established in the system of
lexicon, and also new ones, whose adjectival etymology conveys to the lexeme the vivid colouring of a new
coinage.
For instance, the words a relative or a white or a dear bear an unquestionable mark of established tradition,
while such a noun as a sensitive used in the following sentence features a distinct flavour of purposeful
conversion:
He was a regional man, a man who wrote about sensitives who live away from the places where things
happen (M. Bradbury).
Compare this with the noun a high in the following example:
The weather report promises a new high in heat and humidity (Ibid.).
From the purely categorial point of view, however, there is no difference between the adjectives cited in the
examples and the ones given in the foregoing enumeration, since both groups equally express constitutive
categories of the noun, i.e. the number, the case, the gender, the article determination, and they likewise
equally perform normal nounal functions.
On the other hand, among the substantivized adjectives there is a set characterized by hybrid lexico-
grammatical features, as in the following examples:
The new bill concerning the wage-freeze introduced by the Labour Government cannot satisfy either the
poor, or the rich (Radio Broadcast). A monster. The word conveyed the ultimate in infamy and debasement
inconceivable to one not native to the times (J. Vance). The train, indulging all his English nostalgia for the
plushy and the genteel, seemed to him a deceit (M. Bradbury).
The mixed categorial nature of the exemplified words is evident from their incomplete presentation of the
part-of-speech characteristics of either nouns or adjectives. Like nouns, the words are used in the article form;
like nouns, they express the category of number (in a relational way); but their article and number forms are
rigid, not being subject to the regular structural change inherent in the normal expression of these categories.