GRADABLE ADJECTIVES IN LANGUAGE AND SPEECH
Journal Title: Науковий вісник Дрогобицького державного педагогічного університету імені Івана Франка. Серія: Філологічні науки (мовознавство) - Year 2017, Vol 8, Issue 2
Abstract
The article shows correlation between different types of English gradable adjectives in language, pays special attention to the emotional aspect of adjectives in speech, examines the role of the context in amplifying the emotive component of gradable adjectives. We believe that some adjectives like beautiful, shocking may be treated as both scale and limit adjectives. They refer to the group of scale adjectives because they are used in comparative and superlative forms and are modified by adverbs which express a high degree (extremely beautiful/shocking, very beautiful/shocking), a medium degree (quite beautiful/shocking, rather beautiful/shocking) and a small degree (slightly shocking). Beautiful means “extremely nice”, shocking has a meaning of “very bad, very upsetting”, thus they can be modified by “highest degree” adverbs (absolutely beautiful, utterly beautiful, extremely beautiful/shocking) and by “closeness to the highest degree” adverbs (almost beautiful). This clearly demonstrates that these adjectives also refer to the group of limit adjectives. If we take pure limit adjectives, we can see that they are modified only by “highest degree” and “closeness to the highest degree” adverbs. While conducting our research, we found out some specific speech means of expressing the highest degree of adjectives whose meaning already contains the idea of an absolute degree in language. The adjective ridiculous belongs to the class of causative emotional adjectives, which describe psychological states caused, stimulated by something. Ridiculous means “extremely stupid” and is negative. The use of comparative worse than ridiculous makes the meaning even stronger. The context has the ability to highlight a particular meaning element of gradable extreme adjectives.
Authors and Affiliations
I. P. Polonska
Keywords
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