THE PROBLEM OF ANALYTICAL FORMS OF COMPARISON

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 678.

Usually we differentiate between synthetic and analytical forms of degrees of comparison. But scientists are not unanimous whether to treat the latter as analytical grammatical forms or free word combinations that do not differ from very difficult, somewhat difficult, etc. Those linguists, who claim that more / most + Adj combinations are free lexical units which denote degree of quality, prove this with the help of the following arguments:

1) the adverbs more, most hold their lexical meaning;

2) lexically more / most + Adj are opposed to the combinations with less / least which are free combinations of words possessing the meaning of decrease in degree of quality;

3) the synthetic forms of comparison do not have forms with the identical markers -er, -est and with the opposite meaning;

4) word combinations with more, most can also denote a high degree of quality, e. g. a most important point. Regarding such combinations as analytical grammatical forms could make it necessary to treat many other combinations of this type (e.g. with very) as analytical grammatical forms.

5) between the members of the more / most + Adj combinations there exist syntagmatic relations impossible with the members of analytical grammatical forms.

Here are some arguments in favour of treating more / most + Adj as analytical forms:

1) word combinations of the type more / most + Adj do not differ from synthetic degrees of comparison like bigger, biggest in their meaning; so more and most are identical with -er, -est as grammatical markers of the category of degrees of comparison;

2) the lexical meaning of qualitative adjectives of the difficult- or beautiful- type demands that they should have the category of degrees of comparison as far as they denote gradable qualities;

3) the distribution of -er / -est and more / most is complementary. They embrace all the adjectives which may have degrees of comparison;

4) one and the same lexical meaning is present in all the three forms of degrees of comparison;

5) there exists the possibility of the distant use in more / most + Adj combinations when the first element is detached from the notional element:

e. g. more attractively beautiful (Cf. have never been);

6) the more / most + Adj combinations have a steady combinability; they can be used only with gradable words;

7) etymologically the suffix -most (which is present in some modern words such as utmost, innermost, etc.) is a combination of two elements. The first part – the suffix m-, is typical of the words of Latin origin like primus, optimus. It existed even in Old English and became a basis for the appearance of the homonymous word morpheme with the same meaning to build up analytical forms of comparison.

As for the structures of the type less / least + Adj there are also scholars who deny their grammatical character. B.S. Khaimovich, B.I. Rogovskaya put forward the following arguments:

1) less and -er have different, even opposite meanings;

2) one and the same word can attach both less and -er, so their distribution is not complementary: prettier – less pretty;

3) less is systematically substituted by not so which is not the case with more.

Some scholars admit the grammatical status of less / least + Adj combinations. To prove this L.I. Baisara refers to the following facts:

1) less / least are used with certain groups of words: adjectives and adverbs;

2) the functional word is often detached from the notional one:

e. g. less readily available;

3) more and less can go together in one and the same sentence where they mark the comparative degree of one word;

4) they have similar left-hand combinability with intensifiers.

Regarding less / least + Adj combinations as analytical grammatical forms Y. Blokh calls them forms of "reverse comparison" and claims that the paradigm of degrees of comparison consists not of three but five different forms:

e. g. the least beautiful – less beautiful – beautiful – more beautiful – the most beautiful.