Adjective comparison in contemporary English

Adjective comparison in contemporary English in contemporary English Adjective comparison

DECLARATION

I certify that this thesis is my own work and effort, it is originally written by meunder strict guidance of my supervisor The support I have received in my work and thepreparation of the minor thesis itself has been acknowledged In addition, I certify that allinformation sources and literature used are indicated in the minor thesis’s references

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

For the completion of this thesis, I have been fortunate to receive invaluablecontributions from many people I would like to express my sincere thanks to mysupervisor,………… who step by step guides me during my writing thesis Without hisassistance, excellent suggestions, expert advice and detailed critical comments, the workcould not have been completed I owe his for a debt of gratitude that cannot be measured

In addition, I am greatly indebted to all my lecturers at ………….(Eg:Faculty of ForeignLanguages at Hanoi Pedagogical University No.2, Vinh Phuc), for their useful lectures,support, encouragement and for inspiring me the love for English foreign languageteaching and doing scientific research Besides, the study couldn’t have been preparedwithout the support and the provision of useful materials from my friends Therefore,their kindness will never be forgotten Finally, although great efforts have been made tocomplete the thesis, I am aware that this study is far from perfect Hence, constructivecomments are welcome for more perfection of the thesis

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES DIAGRAM

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale

Language is very important means of communication in daily human life Humanbeings use language, both in written and spoken forms, to express their ideas Nowadays,English is considered as one of the most popular language for everyone all over theworld There are many problems in learning English as listening, speaking, reading,writing, Grammar, lexicology, etc Grammar plays a very important role in English, it isnot easy for English learners to study Moreover, learners are affected by their mothertongue during the process of studying that cause much confusion to them However, it isnot so difficult that English learners can not study because English grammar is alsosystematic In grammar, Adjective is one of essential parts of speech to form a sentence.Adjective is frequently used in daily life such as describing things, objects,… orexpressing feeling, emotion, etc As well known, English adjectives are diversified inmany forms, meanings as well as usages It takes learners quite a long time to understandgrammar deeply, especially adjectives It therefore seems that the semantic and syntacticfunction of adjectives are still too difficult for students So I researches Adjectivecomparison in contemporary English with the hope that the my graduation paper willcontribute a small part on enriching the source of materials, and it hopes that students beable to further understand about semantic and syntactic function of English adjectives aswell as partly avoid making errors when studying these matters In the my point of view

in order to use English effectively, studying grammar is essential requirement becauseEnglish Grammar is one of the most difficult subject It is said that study of Englishgrammar could improve the ability of rest skills like listening, speaking, reading, writing,

… Mastering English grammar helps us to use the language correctly and effectively.That is why I chooses studying English grammar for the graduation paper, particularlyadjectives in English I decided to do a study focusing on Adjective comparison incontemporary English I hopes that this thesis will be helpful for the learners in theirstudying and after reading the graduation paper, many students will be interested insearching and developing this topic in order that the matter of semantic and syntactic

function of English adjectives will be clearer and more well-provided than thosepresented in the graduation paper.

1.2 Aims of the study

There are three main aims of the research:

Firstly, to examine how adjectives in English are compared today

Secondly, to determine how well the descriptions in modern grammars agree withhow adjectives are compared in authentic written English

Thirdly, to see whether there have been any recent changes in the way of indicatingcomparison It will be a quantitative study

1.3 Scope of the study

The general research area of this study is adjective comparison in contemporaryEnglish

The phenomenon is the syntactic functions of adjectives in English in comparisonwith other periods Others relating to the functions of adjectives are also brieflymentioned

1.4 Methods of the study

This study mainly based on scientific theories about English adjectives, the writerhas to collect materials and finds the most suitable ones to systematize as well as analyzethem The main methods of the graduation paper are:

Firstly, descriptive method is used to describe and make a general overview ofEnglish 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 Englishadjectives and other periods equivalents

1.5 Structure of the study

To gain the above goals, the graduation paper is divided into five chapters and areference

Chapter I is the introduction, including the reasons for choosing the title, aims and

objectives, scope, methods and structure of the study

Chapter II introduces an overview of Adjective comparison in contemporary English Chapter III is a study to methods of the title.

Chapter IV is discussion about Adjective comparison in contemporary English.

Chapter V is the conclusion part, gives brief finding of all the above sections and

references come at the end of the graduation paper

CHAPTER 2: OVERVIEW OF ADJECTIVE COMPARISON IN

CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH 2.1 Overview of Adjective comparison

It is now a commonplace that the availability of computer corpora permits, as oursubtitle suggests, “a more quicker, easier and more effective” way of gathering data forboth synchronic and diachronic research Taken from the British National Corpus, whichprovides the main source of our data, our subtitle also illustrates well the competingforms of adjective comparison in contemporary spoken English that we will discuss here.The primary competition is between the so-called inflectional comparative (e.g easier)which is the older form, and the newer periphrastic construction (e.g more effective),with the double comparative (e.g more quicker), now considered non-standard, muchless frequent

The use of a large computerized data base such as the British National Corpusallows us to demonstrate that some adjectives overwhelmingly show a preference for thenewer periphrastic mode of comparison, some for the older inflectional form, while somefluctuate between the two We will also compare our results with a diachronic study done

by Kytö (1996a) This yields a broad overview of the main lines of historicaldevelopment which have shaped the modern system, at the same time as it allows us topinpoint certain key stages in the transition from the earlier to the present-day system.The Late ME and EModE data used in the diachronic study are of necessity written,while ours from modern English are by choice spoken Our original interest in the use ofthe non-standard double comparatives motivated our initial decision to begin our study ofcontemporary English with part of the spoken rather than written data in the BritishNational Corpus because these double forms are now almost, if not entirely, confined tocolloquial spoken English (see further in 3) This does, however, pose a problem fordiachronic comparison, which we try to remedy somewhat by considering the material inthe ARCHER corpus (A Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers; seeBiber et al 1994a and 1994b) For the purposes of this study we have taken fromARCHER some 1.4 million words representing six text types2 sampled from the period

between 1650–1990 Thus, the first subperiod from ARCHER overlaps with the finalsubperiod of the Early Modern English section of the Helsinki Corpus, and the lastsubperiod from ARCHER brings us up to the modern period covered by the BritishNational Corpus This allows us to bridge the time gap between the Early Modern andcontemporary English data Finally, we outline some issues requiring further research andsuggest some ways of investigating them.

2.2 Brief history of adjective comparison in English

The topic of adjective comparison has been discussed in general terms in most of

the grammars of contemporary English (see e.g Quirk et al 1985), in the standard

handbooks on the history of English (see e.g Jespersen 1949), as well as in a fewspecialist works (see e.g Pound 1901, Knüpfer 1922 and Rohr 1929) Historically

speaking, the so-called periphrastic constructions with more and most (e.g more

vigorous, most vigorous) are innovations In Old English the comparative and superlative

forms of adjectives were uniformly marked by inflectional endings; compare modern

English greater and greatest The periphrastic forms first appeared in the thirteenth

century (see Mitchell 1985: 84–5 for the few attested possible examples in Old English),possibly under the influence of Latin (and to a lesser extent French) They gained groundsteadily after the 14th century until the beginning of the 16th century when they hadbecome as frequent as they are today (see Pound 1901: 19)

As is often the case with syntactic innovations in the history of English, a variety offactors has been cited as responsible We have already noted above historians’ attribution

of the development to foreign influence At the same time others pointed to stylisticfactors such as speakers’ needs for emphasis and clarity More generally speaking,however, the loss of inflectional morphology accompanying the gradual shift in Englishtoward a more analytical syntax provided a typology consistent with the periphrasticconstruction Nevertheless, what we will show is that after the newer forms areintroduced, change proceeds along a divergent track After an initial spurt in the use ofthe new periphrastic type of comparison in some environments, the newer formseventually oust the older ones completely In other environments, however, the newer

forms recede in favor of the older inflectional type The majority of both comparative andsuperlative adjectives in present-day English are in fact of the inflectional type, contrary

to what one might expect from the general trend in English towards a more analyticalsyntax

The availability of the new periphrastic constructions also added yet one more

option to the system, a hybrid form in which more and most are combined with the inflectional adjective, e.g more quicker and most hardest These are usually called

multiple or double comparatives.3 Inflectional double forms are also found in a limited

number of words such as lesser, worser, bestest, more better As a consequence, during

the Middle English and Early Modern English periods, there were three alternative forms

of comparison for an adjective such as easy: inflectional (easier/easiest), periphrastic (more easy/most easy) and double (more easier/most easiest).

2.3 Recent research on adjective comparison in contemporary

English A corpus study by Kytö and Romaine shows that the percentage ofinflectional comparatives increased from 52% in 1750–1800 to 69% in 1900–1950,whereas that of inflectional superlatives remained at 53% in both periods (1997: 337) In

a later study they found that the Diagram s for 1950–1990 were 62% and 63%,respectively (2000: 177) Many linguists suggest that today the synthetic comparison isbecoming less common, but these Diagram s contradict this.3 Barber (1997: 146) sees thechanges in adjective comparison as a part of the evolution of English from a synthetic to

an analytic language Mondorf (2003: 253) cites a parallel development in the case of thetwo ways of building the genitive in English, where the ofgenitive is used in what sherefers to as ‘more demanding environments.’ She investigates more-support along thesame lines:

In cognitively more demanding environments which require an increasedprocessing load, language users tend to make up for the additional effort by resorting tothe analytic (more) rather than the synthetic (–er) comparative (2003: 252)

She gives several reasons for more-support related to phonology, morphology,semantics, pragmatics and syntax

Contrary to most grammars, Mondorf states that there are more important reasonsfor the choice of comparison than the number of syllables in the positive Firstly, thenumber of syllables in the comparative is a factor: sensibler is shorter than more sensible.

I agree, but would have chosen the more common example simpler instead Secondly,trisyllabic adjectives beginning with un– can take endings Thirdly, this is also the casewith some polysyllabic compounds such as environment-friendlier (Mondorf 2003: 257) The frequency, too, is important Rare adjectives such as apt tend to be analyticallycompared more often than common adjectives like hard New adjectives such as fun(originally a noun) are usually not inflected (Mondorf 2003: 259ff) It is to be noted thatapt is not mentioned in the grammars

Concerning the endings of disyllabic adjectives mentioned in the grammars,Mondorf finds that ready takes analytical comparison in 56% of the cases in her corpusstudy, whereas lucky only is compared analytically in 3% of the cases She finds noreason why adjectives ending in –r and –re (clever, mature) should take the ending –er:she thinks that there are reasons for two identical consonants (/r/) to be avoided Hercorpus study shows that mature is usually compared analytically (2003: 259) Shecompares these endings with adjectives ending in –st as just and moist that seldom takethe superlative ending –est (2003: 279) However, the superlative fastest is almost alwaysused Mondorf shows that it is wrong to treat all disyllabic adjectives ending in syllabic/l/ equally, as the ones ending in –l tend to take phrasal comparison, whereas those ending

in –le are usually inflected (2003: 283f)

Pragmatic reasons such as clarity for analytic comparison are often discussed.Nevertheless a phrase like I asked more polite questions is ambiguous, since more canrefer to the adjective (‘politer questions’) as well as to the noun (‘more questions’) Notsurprisingly, opinions on which comparison is the most expressive differ Some claim thatinflected superlatives are more expressive (the unhappiest creature in the world), but acounter-argument is that more and most can be stressed in speech, thereby making thecomparison more salient than is possible with the inflected form

As for semantics, Mondorf states that when the meaning is concrete, adjectives tend

to be inflected: the beer is bitterer (concrete) vs the more bitter takeover battles of thepast (abstract) The Diagram s from her corpus study of remote in the concrete and theabstract sense are clear: when expressing concrete meanings, remoter is used in 88% ofthe cases, whereas it is used in 44% expressing abstract meanings Further, she states thatadjectives that are less gradable tend to be analytically compared (2003: 289f) A study

by Leech and Culpeper supports this Nevertheless, as they found that right, wrong anddead were seldom compared in their study, they suggest that these adjectives are ‘notvery gradable’ (1997: 356)

Leech and Culpeper mention three contextual factors to be taken into account whenconsidering why monosyllabic adjectives take periphrastic comparison:

(1) A following than: I am more proud of this card than of this badge

(2) Degree modifiers: I was much more sick of being unemployed

(3) Co-ordination and parallelism: their achievement becomes more impressive andtheir status more clear The first and the third factor are mentioned in some of thegrammars, but the second is not Finally, there are other cases than these three: In EastBerlin, President Mitterrand was more blunt Leech and Culpeper point out that in all four

of these examples the periphrastic forms are used predicatively (1997: 357) AlsoMondorf concludes in a later study that adjectives in predicative position take analyticcomparison more often than adjectives in attributive position, but clever seems to be anexception (2003: 275ff) However, superlatives are considered in neither study

In order to examine language changes, Leech and Culpeper compared disyllabicadjectives in a corpus from 1961 with those in a corpus containing texts from the 1980sand the early 1990s They found that the adjectives ending in –y were solidlyinflectional–with some minor differences between the corpora–but that the group ending

in –ly took synthetic comparison less frequently in the later corpus, and the change washighly significant statistically Leech and Culpeper found that other disyllabic adjectivessuch as quiet, clever, narrow and shallow were strongly inflectional in the later corpus(1997: 361)

As a number of earlier linguists had suggested that a final stress is an importantfactor in determining whether disyllabic adjectives are to be inflected, Leech andCulpeper investigated 22 such words of which all but akin and aware were loanwords.Apart from the ones ending in –ure (mature, obscure, secure) and polite, often mentioned

in the grammars, they found inflectional comparatives of compact, complete, intense,severe, profound and remote, whereof the two latter were quite frequent (10% and 32%).However, 10 of the 22 words were never inflected, so Leech and Culpeper concluded thatthe comparison had changed, since it seemed unlikely that so many earlier linguists werewrong (1997: 361ff) The fact that 20 of 6 the 22 words were loanwords supportsMondorf’s statement that in more demanding environments language users tend to preferthe analytic comparative (see above) Moreover, Leech and Culpeper conclude that anumber of other disyllabic adjectives such as common and likely seem to be shiftingtowards periphrastic comparison (1997: 371)

Lindquist (1998) studied The Independent from 1995 and found that disyllabicadjectives ending in –y were inflected in 83% of the cases in the comparative and in 97%

of the cases in the superlative The corresponding percentages for disyllabic adjectivesending in –ly were 54% and 80% Here the very common words likely (98% analytic)and early (100% synthetic) are not included (1998: 207ff) These results support whatothers have stated: the disyllabic adjectives ending in –y are more often inflected thanthose ending in –ly, while endings are more frequent in the superlative

Like many others Barber also states that the synthetic comparison is becoming lesscommon He mentions cloudy, common, cruel, pleasant, quiet and simple which ‘a fewyears ago’ were normally inflected, but now usually take phrasal comparison He addsthat some younger speakers use more and most even with monosyllabic adjectives (1997:146) The same tendency has been observed also in other Germanic languages such asSwedish and Danish, but there are no signs of a shift in German (Kytö & Romaine 1997:345ff)

In conclusion, comparison was expressed synthetically in Old English and theanalytic comparison was introduced later, during the Middle English period In Early

Modern English the choice of comparison was freer than today: analytic comparison ofmonosyllabic adjectives (most sweet) was not uncommon and there were many inflectedforms of polysyllabic adjectives that now have disappeared, such as beautifuller Kytöand Romaine conclude that although inflected comparatives have become less frequent,inflected superlatives have become more so The study by Leech and Culpeper supportsthe first conclusion Thus, an ongoing change in the analytic direction is likely in theformation of comparatives, but is apparently not taking place in the case of thesuperlatives Perhaps the superlatives, which are less common, are the last to change Thesituation today is not easy to describe In general, the grammars state that short adjectivesare inflected and long adjectives are not, with some exceptions They add rules based onmorphology, and sometimes rules based on syntax However, the situation is morecomplicated The reasons why speakers choose one or the other form to expresscomparison are related to all core fields of linguistics: morphology, syntax, semantics,pragmatics and phonology.

CHAPTER 3: DATA

As we said above, the main source of data for our analysis is the British NationalCorpus of 100 million words of contemporary spoken and written English Due tolimitations of space and time we have confined ourselves here to an exploratory sub-corpus of 2,176,000 words of spoken dialogue from the southern region of Englandwhich we indexed for search purposes using WordCruncher While we hope to extend theanalysis in further work to look at regional and other social parameters such as class, ageand sex, in this paper we have concentrated primarily on linguistic factors constrainingthe variation In the following analysis we have also relied heavily on the basic categoriesset up by Kytö (1996a) in her study of rivalling forms of adjective comparison in theHelsinki Corpus of English Texts so that we can maintain some diachronic continuity.This study included some 950,000 words from the Late Middle (1350–1500) and EarlyModern English (1500–1710) sections of the corpus

Table 1.1 provides an overview of the data grouped in terms of the comparative andsuperlative forms of defective and non-defective adjectives We have divided adjectivesinto these two broad groups, according to whether the forms of comparison are based onthe same root as the positive form or not Instances of “umlaut” comparison(e.g elder/older, eldest/ oldest) are included in the group of non-defective adjectives Thegroup of defective or heterogeneous words includes the instances for which thecomparative and superlative are not from the same root as the positive(e.g good/better/best)

Table 1.1: Non-defective v defective forms of adjective comparison in the British National Corpus (spoken component, South, dialogue), compared with the Helsinki

Corpus of English Texts (Late Middle and Early Modern English).

NON-DEFECTIV

E

DEFECTIVE

LME 388(52%) 356(48%) 744 258(42%) 359(58%) 617

As we can see that, out of the total of 3,548 adjectives in our sample from theBritish National Corpus 65% (N = 2,318) are non-defective and 35% (N = 1,230)defective The comparative forms are more frequent than the superlative ones in eachgroup of adjectives, but particularly for the non-defective adjectives, where they accountfor nearly 3/4 of the occurrences This supports the observation made by Quirk et al.(1985: 463) that in present-day English the comparative is on average more frequent thanthe superlative The analysis of 3,965 adjectives from the Late Middle and Early Modernperiods revealed less asymmetry in the distribution of words between the categories ofdefective (46%) and non-defective (54%), though the non-defective group still accountsfor more than half the data (Kytö 1996a) In the group of non-defective forms, thecomparative and superlative forms are represented to more or less the same extent in thetwo main periods; in the group of defective forms, the superlative forms cover some 60%

Table 1.2: Defective adjectives (BNC, spoken, South, dialogue)

In our data from the British National Corpus we found the following two examples

of double comparatives with defective adjectives (1–2) and three double superlatives (3–5); for comparison, it is of interest to point out that the only instances of this type found

in the written component of the British National Corpus (90 million words) were threeinstances of the form bestest (in rather jocular uses as in my bestest friend):

(1) – get an electrical one, they’re much more <trunc> chea </trunc>, they’remuch more better, er shh, shh you’re done <vocal desc=laugh> you don’t have to spendall day mowing 9

[“one” = an electrical lawn mower]

(2) – They’ve come worse off

– Worser?

– That’s not a word

– Worse off

(3) – I already bought in Woolworths once! Woolworths, they have them <trunc> an

</trunc> they have

– They got them in Woolworths

(4) – Where can we play

– This is the bestest one you can read Read it for Father Christmas

(5) – But <unclear> my nails Look even my bestest one

In the first example the speaker is Marsha (13 yrs), who obviously first aims at thedouble form more cheaper but ends up using the defective form more better In thesecond example Grace, a 15-year-old female student speaking with London accent,notices she has produced the non-standard form worser This speaker has a socialbackground representative of top or middle management, or of administrative or

professional ranks Her interlocutor is an unidentified person, and the conversation takesplace in a school in the ‘Greater London’ area In the third example the informant isChristopher, a seven year old schoolchild of unknown social background.

But not only very young speakers produce double forms The two instances

of bestest in examples (4–5) are produced by adult speakers under or around 30 Example(4), is by Chris, a 26-year-old warehouse operator with speech habits characteristic ofcentral south-west England He is still active in education and his social status based onoccupation is given as semi-skilled or unskilled Example (5) comes from Gail, a 30-year-old housewife, who left school aged 15 or 16 and is from the same dialect area andrepresentative of the same social class as Chris With this limited sample of double forms

it would be premature to hazard too many guesses about their possible social distribution

We leave this for further study when we have had time to examine more spoken data.Because the group of non-defective adjectives is of more interest for observing thecompetition among the three forms, we will not say any more about the defectiveadjectives

Table 1.3 shows the distribution of inflectional and periphrastic forms in our corpus.Out of a total of 2,318 non-defective adjectives most comparatives are of the inflectionaltype (84%) as are superlatives (73%) Compared with the results obtained in the study ofLate Middle and Early Modern English, we can see a gradual increase in the inflectionalforms for both comparatives (from 55% to 59%) and superlatives (from 45% to 50%),with a corresponding decline in periphrastic forms in comparatives (from 45% to 41%)and superlatives (from 55% to 50%)

The distribution of comparative forms remained remarkably steady across the LateMiddle and Early Modern English periods Except for a change of 5% in the use of theperiphrastic superlative as compared to inflectional comparative (4%), no majordifferences can be seen along the diachronic axis From the 1420s on, the inflectionalform prevails in approximately 60% of the instances recorded Nevertheless, seen fromthe vantage point of contemporary English, the study appears to have intersected the