semantic and syntactic functions of english adjectives – a contrastive analysis with their vietnamese equivalents

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Graduation paper
function of English adjectives will be clearer and more well-provided than
those presented in the graduation paper.
1.2 Aims of the study
In the frame of the graduation paper, the writer would like to focus on:
- Making a general view on definition of adjectives in general and
focusing on discussing matters in relation to semantic and syntactic functions
of English adjectives in particular.
- Classifying ten kinds of English adjectives in terms of usage.
- Making a contrastive analysis between English adjectives and their
Vietnamese equivalents.
1.3 Scope of the study
English grammar is a large field that can not be mentioned all,
therefore, the writer only mentioned to some small problems of English
grammar, that is English adjectives.
In the frame of the study, this graduation paper deals with the semantic
and syntactic functions of English adjectives, especially the classification of
adjective semantic features in terms of usage as well as presents a contrastive
analysis between English adjectives with their Vietnamese equivalents.
1.4 Methods of the study
This study mainly based on scientific theories about English adjectives,
the writer has to collect materials and finds the most suitable ones to
systematize as well as analyze them. The main methods of the graduation
paper are:
Firstly, descriptive method is used to describe and make a general
overview of English adjectives in terms of their semantic and syntactic
functions.
Secondly, statistic method is used to gather information about English
adjectives, apart from that giving the study point of view of this thesis.
Finally, contrastive analysis method is used to make a comparison
between English adjectives and their Vietnamese equivalents.
1.5 Design of the study
To gain the above goals, the graduation paper is divided into five
chapters and a reference.
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Chapter I is the introduction, including the reasons for choosing the
title, aims and objectives, scope, methods and design of the study.
Chapter II introduces an overview of English adjectives with the
definition of adjectives and their semantic and syntactic functions of English
adjectives.
Chapter III is a study to a new approach to semantic and syntactic
functions of English adjectives.
Chapter IV is contrastive analysis between English adjectives and
their Vietnamese equivalents, point out the similarities and differences of
English adjectives.
Chapter V is the conclusion part, gives brief finding of all the above
sections.
references come at the end of the graduation paper.
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Chapter II
An overview of English adjectives
2.1 What is an adjective?
When talking about adjectives, many grammarians have many
different definition:
According to L. G. Alexander (1998, 106), a word is considered as an
adjective when it describes the person, thing,… which a noun refers to or
describes the ideas contained in the whole group of words, as in :
Professor Robert s lecture on environment was’ fascinating.
Many adjectives can answer the question what… like ?
What s Tom like?’ ( to look at)
He is dark/ short/ tall.
(Alexander, 1998, p 106)
However, as the opinions of Quirk et all, “ we usually can not tell a
word is an adjective by looking at it in isolation because the form of a word
doesn’t necessarily indicate its syntactic function. Nor can we identify a word
as an adjective merely from its potentials for inflexion ” (1973,114). As for
them, a word is commonly considered an adjective if it has at least one of four
criteria:
It can freely occur in attributive function, i. e they can
premodify a noun, appearing between the determiner and the head of a noun
phrase:
an oval face a beautiful girl the round table
It can freely occur in predicative function, i. e they can function
as subjective complement or as object complement:
The girl is attractive.
I guess the girl attractive.
They can be modified by the intensifier very. For example:
The new house is very large.
She is very happy now.
It can take comparative and superlative forms. The
comparison may be by means of inflections (-er, -est), or by the addition of
the premodifiers more and most or called periphrastic. Let’s see the following
examples:
Ho Chi Minh is the most wonderful city in Vietnam.
Lan is more charming than other classmates.
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The children are happier now.
( Quirk et al, 1973, p115 )
To sum up, adjective is one of four elements of open class items
(noun, adjective, adverb, verb) which belongs to part of speech in English
grammar, and adjectives are describing words expressing quality, quantity,
size, colour, characteristics, etc.
2.2 Semantic function of English adjectives
The writer focuses mainly on English grammar of Quirk et al, the
writer found that adjectives are classified into stative and dynamic, gradable
and non- gradable.
2.2.1 Stative and dynamic adjectives
As their name suggests, stative adjective denote a state or condition,
which may generally be consider permanent, such as big, red, tall, etc. Stative
adjectives can not normally be used in imperative constructions:
* Be big/ red/ tall.
* He is being red/ big/ tall.
( Quirk et al, 1973, p124)
In contrast, dynamic adjectives denote attributes which are, to some
extent at least, under the control of the one who possesses them. For instance,
brave denotes an attribute which may not always be in evidence( unlike red,
for example ), but which may be called upon as it is required. For this reason,
it is appropriate to use it in an imperative.
Be brave.
Don t be afraid ’ (Quirk et al, 1973, p124)
Adjectives that can be used dynamically include: awkward, brave,
calm, careless, cruel, funny, good, noisy, timid, etc.(Quirk at al, 1973, p124)
All dynamic adjectives can be used in imperatives such as be careful,
don t be cruel,’ and they can also be use predicatively in progressive tense:
Your son is being disruptive in class.
He is being careful.
We are being very patient with you.
The majority of adjectives are stative. The stative or dynamic contrast,
as it related to adjectives, is largely a semantic one, though as we have seen it
also has syntactic implications.
2.2.2 Gradable and non- gradable adjectives
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According to Longman English grammar (1988, p108) adjectives can
be also divided into gradable and non- gradable.
Gradable adjectives mean a large class of words which can be graded,
or in other words, they can be modified by intensifiers and include
comparison such as very young, young, younger, the youngest…
An adjective is gradable when:
We can imagine degrees in the quality referred to and so can use it with
words like very, too and enough. Let’s see the followings examples:
Your work is good.
Your work is very good.
Mary has been very ill.
We can form a comparative and superlative from it as big, bigger,
biggest, etc.
Non- gradable adjectives are a small class that can not be graded or in
other words, principally technical adjectives and adjectives denoting
provenance such as atomic, hydrochloric, British…
According to Longman English grammar (1988, p108) an adjective is
non- gradable when:
We can not modify it, it means that we can not use it with very, too,…
We can not make a comparative or superlative from it such as daily,
dead, medical, unique, etc.
2.2.3 Inherent and non- inherent
Based on English grammar of Quirk et al(1973,125), some adjectives
are classified into inherent and non- inherent.
Most attributive adjectives denote some attribute of the noun which
they modify. For instance, the phrase a red car may be said to denote a car
which is red. In fact most adjective- noun sequences such as this can be
loosely reformulated in a similar way, for example:
an old man ~ a man who is old
difficult questions ~ questions which are difficult
round glasses ~ glasses which are round
This applies equally to postpositive adjectives as:
Something understood ~ something which is understood
The people responsible ~ the people who are responsible
In each case the adjective denotes an attribute or quality of the noun,
as the reformulations show. Adjectives of this type are known as inherent
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adjectives. The attribute they denote is , as it were, inherent in the noun which
they modify.
However, not all adjectives are related to the noun in the same way.
For example, the adjective small in a small businessman does not describe an
attribute of the businessman. It can not be reformulated as a businessman who
is small. Instead, it refers to a businessman whose business is small. We refer
to adjectives of this type as non- inherent adjectives. They refer less directly to
an attribute of the noun than inherent adjectives do.
Whether or not an adjective is inherent or non- inherent, it may
involve relation to an implicit or explicit standard, such as in a big mouse, the
adjective big is inherent, the meaning is the relative size of mice, contrast a
little mouse and in a big fool, the adjective big is non- inherent, the meaning is
degrees of foolishness, contrast a bit of a fool.
Here are some more examples, showing the contrast between inherent
and non- inherent:

Inherent Non- inherent
distant hills distant relatives
a complete chapter a complete idiot
a heavy burden a heavy smoker
a social survey a social animal
an old man an old friend

( wikipedia.com viewed on March 10, 2008)
Some adjectives can come before or after nouns, which may change
meaning or may not change meaning of adjective. The following is come
cases denoting the position of adjectives ( with or without change in meaning).
Adjectives come before or after nouns, which may not change in
meaning: some adjectives, mostly ending in –able and –ible can come
before or after nouns and usually with no change in meaning such as
available, eligible, imaginable, taxable, possible, impossible, etc. Let’s
consider the above examples:
I doubt whether we can complete our contract in the time
available/ in the available time.(1)
We have to exploit all available potential/ all potential available
in our country. (2)
As we know that when changing the position of adjective available in
the example1 and 2, there is no change in meaning of adjective.
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However, some adjectives sometimes have different meanings if they
modify different nouns, for example, old can be either a central adjective or an
adjective restricted to attributive position as in an old friend of mine means a
longstanding friend. In this case, old is the opposite of new. The person
referred to is not identified as old , but it is very his friend that is old.
Moreover, some adjectives come before or after nouns with a change
in meaning, in some case a few adjectives change in meaning depending on
whether they are used before or after a noun. Some of these are concerned,
elect, involved, present, proper, responsible. They would be illustrated as
follows:
The concerned doctor rang for an ambulance.
~ The worried doctor rang for ambulance.
The doctor concerned is on holiday.
~ The doctor responsible is on holiday.
(Longman English grammar, 1988, 111)
Some adjectives such as present, absent, concerned, involved and
responsible are used with most frequency in postmodification. Sometimes
they are also used in postmodification but then their meaning are different, for
example:
There were ten members of staff present. (there)
Our present problems are much worse. (now)
The person concerned must be fined. (relevant)
(Quirk et al, 1972, 418)
2.3 Syntactic functions of English adjectives
An adjective may bear several possible relationships to the noun or
noun phrase that it qualifies.
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2.3.1 Attributive adjectives
According to Longman English grammar (1988, 110) adjectives are
attributive when they modify nouns( they can pre-modify or post-modify
nouns). Therefore attributive adjectives can be considered as part of the noun
phrase. Let’s see the following the examples:
Lan is a beautiful girl.
Hung is a heavy smokers.( It means that Hung smokes a lot.)
After the compound indefinite pronouns and adverbs, which begin
with no-, any-, some-, every-, and end in -body, -one, -thing, -where,
adjectives are usually used attributively as postmodifiers:
Anyone ( who is) intelligent can do it.
I want to try on something ( that is) larger.
There is nothing new, but something important.
Some adjectives can be only used attributively with absolute/complete
meanings such as mere, out and out, sheer, utter,…for example:
What you say is sheer/ utter nonsense.
He is a mere boy.
The above adjectives can behave like adverbs of degree or intensifiers
but they can be used only in the attributive position. To prove this, we can take
some examples into consideration:
* He is mere.
* What you say is sheer/ utter.
These sentences is meaningless, they are not correct. They can not be
complement, so one time, we can affirm that the above adjectives can be only
attributive.
Adjectives which restrict the reference of the noun are always
attributive as the followings:
certain( a woman of a certain age )
chief ( my chief complaint )
main ( my main concern)
only ( the only explanation)
particular ( my particular aim)
principle( the principle reason)
sold ( my sold interest)
These adjectives only used attributive, except for certain and
particular which then change in meaning. (Longman English Grammar 110-
111).
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We should take the use of commas into consideration to separate
adjectives which are used attributively. When we have more than two
adjectives before a noun, we only need commas to separate those which are
equally important ( it means that where the order of the first two could easily
be reversed), for instance:
This is a beautiful, bright clean room.
That is to say, we put a comma after the quality adjective, we never use
a comma after the adjective that comes immediately in front of a noun. Let’s
see the following examples:
The hotel porter led me to a beautiful, bright clean room.
Joy is engaged to a daring, very attractive young air force pilot.
If there are only two adjectives, we separate them with and.
He wore dirty and old shoes.
I have a young and beautiful sister.
When there more than two adjectives, they may be separated by
commas and apart from the last adjective which separated by and.
He wore dirty, wet, old and worn shoes.
But, there are some fixed phrases of adjectives which are often linked
by and : old and musty with, a long and winding road, hard and fast rules.
When the premodifiers are two color adjectives, it is obligatory to use
and, not the commas as: the yellow and blue flag and it does not exist in * the
yellow, blue flag.
Sometimes, we use but instead of and if the meaning of two
premodifying adjectives are contrastive: a rich but stingy man, a cheap but
effective solution. ( Longman English grammar, 115-116)
2.3.2 Predicative adjectives
An adjective may serve to quality as subject or objective and to
complete the predication begun to the verb. Such an adjective is called a
predicative adjective. If it qualifies the subject, it functions as a subjective
complement, if it qualifies a direct objective, it functions as an objective
complement.
* Subject complement: Adjective is subject complement when there is a
co-reference between subject and subject complement. Both of them are in an
intensive relationship. Let’s see the following examples:
The children were noisy and naughty.(3)
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In the example 3, noisy and naughty function as predicative adjectives,
they both qualify children and complete the predications begun by the verb
were.
Your suspicions seem to be unfounded.(4)
In example 4, the infinitive to be unfunded functions as a predicative
adjective, it both qualifies suspicions and completes the predication begun by
the verb seemed.
* Object complement: adjective is object complement when there is Co-
reference between direct object and object complement. They are in intensive
relationship with object. Let’s see the following examples:
The situation made Mr. Hardy courageous and even a bit daring.
(5)
In sentence 5, courageous and daring functions as predicative
adjectives, they both qualify Mr. Hardy and complete the predication begun
by the verb made. They are objective complement.
The jury found him guilty.(6)
In example 6, guilty is a predicative adjective, it both qualifies him and
completes the predicative begun by the verb found, so guilty is an objective
complement.
Apart from being subject complement to noun phrase ( subjunctive) ,
adjectives are also subject complement to clauses when the subject is a finite
Clause or non-finite Clause.
Whether he will design is uncertain.
Driving a bus isn’t easy.
The adjective which functions as objective complement often show the
result of the process denoted by the verb, for example:
He tide the rope tight ( As a result, he rope was then tight)
He pushed the window open
( As a result, the window was then open.)
(Quirk et al,115)
Apart from the above cases, some adjectives with different meaning
also are predicative adjectives:
*Adjectives describing health uses predicatively:
The following adjectives are most common in predicative position
relating to health: faint, ill, poorly, unwell and well.
“What’s the matter with him?
He’s ill/ unwell. He feels faint”
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