Filologiya məsələləri, 2017
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GÜLŞƏN CÜMŞÜDOVA
Azərbaycan Dövlət Neft və Sənaye Universiteti
THE WORDS OF THE CATEGORY OF STATE
Açar sözlər: hal, kateqoriya, nitq hissəsi, dil, əsas, predikativ, zərflik, təyin,
funskiya, cümlə
Key words: state, category, parts of speech, language, main, predicative,
adverb, attribute, function, sentence
Ключевые слова: состояние, категория, часть речи, язык, главная
часть, предикативный, наречие, определение, функция, предложение
The words of the category of state denote the temporary state condition
of persons or things.
The essence of the words asleep, afloat, astir, ablaze, etc. and their
position in the system of parts of speech is still under discussion. They
constitute a special part of speech, which may be called “stative” and is
characterized by the prefix “-a”.
The main function of the statives is that of predicative and in this case
they are preceded by a link verb, most usually the verb “be”, but
occasionally also “fall, keep, feel”. Examples with the link verb “be” are
very numerous and varied. A few will suffice:
The child was asleep.
The whole house was astir.
Something is afoot.
Statives are also occasionally found
in the function of objective
predicatives, particularly after the verb “find” or “have” and a noun or
pronoun, as in the sentences:
He found his sister alone.
Then he spoke, and in a moment had his audience afire.
The basically predicative quality of the statives is equally evident in all
of these cases. It is somewhat weakened when a stative has the function of
an attribute following its noun:
A man alive to social interests.
And the predicative quality of the stative is further weakened when it
precedes a noun as its attribute.
The phrase “be+stative” may sometimes be synonymous with the
continuous form of the corresponding verb. For example:
He is asleep.
He is sleeping.
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The existence of the words of the category of state in English on the
following grounds:
(1) the meaning of “state” is merely a special variety of the meaning of
“property”
typical of adjectives;
(2) words of this category can be preceded by the word
more: more
ashamed, etc.
(3) they can be modified by adverbs (
painfully, alive), by prepositional
phrases (
alive with stars) and they can be the predicative, prepositional or
detached attribute, and, less frequently, a prepositive attribute.
In English there is a certain class of words which are still disputable.
In works of foreign grammarians, they are not considered to be a separate
part of speech. Some dictionaries published in
the United Kingdom and the
USA refer them to predicative. It is well-known that no grammarians
mention this kind of part of speech. To this class of words, we include
aboard, alive, asleep, afraid, aghast, awake and so on. Some Russian
scientists regard them as a separate part of speech. call them adlinks on the
analogy of adverbs. These words can be viewed as a part of speech because
of their following features:
1. as meaning they denote state
2. stem building morpheme: it is formed by the help of productive
prefixal morpheme /a-/
3. combinability: these words are exclusively combined with the link-
verb
to be and adverbs
4. Syntactic function: they are always used as predicative.
They do not have any grammatical category and this is the only
feature of them which differ them from other parts of speech /notional parts
are meant/: This part of speech can't be mixed up with adjectives or adverbs
as some linguists do, because they do not possess the degrees of comparison
and their combinability is different. "A-" component homonymically
combines in itself the functions of prefix, preposition and article. - the prefix
a- can express the meanings of prepositions: away, on, up, out. For example:
She is
asleep - She is sleeping /on/.
He has gone to the shore - He is
ashore.
This part of speech seems to be more economical as it is seen from
the examples above. Therefore, it may be one of
the reasons of its wide
usage in Modern English.
The words of this type are based on several assumptions which are by no
means self-evident or necessary.
Among the words signifying properties of nouns there is a specific
set: the words built up by the prefix – a and denoting different states, mostly
of temporary duration. They are different from adjectives, because they can’t
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function as attributes. Their function in the sentence is that of a predicative,
rarely – post-positional attributes to nouns. They form a closed set of several
dozen, they don’t have the degrees of comparison. “The streets were alive
with traffic”, “No man alive could do it”, “Swimmers
are afraid of the
sharks”, “The artist felt ashamed of his bad work”, “They were aware of the
danger”, “The whole town was astir with the news”, afire, afoot, askew, ajar
= half-open.
These kind of words have the following morphological, semantic and
syntactic characteristics:
1) The words of this type denote “states” while adjectives denote
“qualities”;
2)
The words of this type may be characterized by the prefix a- (it
derives from the Middle English preposition an ‘in, on’): alive,
asleep, ajar, etc.;
3)
The words of this type do not possess the category of the degrees
of comparison;
4)
The words of this type are used predicatively only, e.g. He is
awake.
Because of the said features, these words are regarded by some
grammarians as a separate part of speech which has
been variously referred
to as the category of state words, adlinks, and statives. The number of such
words does not exceed several dozen. The traditional view of the stative,
which separates temporary adjectives from other adjectives, does not seem to
be convincing: temporary adjectives are part and parcel of the adjective class
as a whole. At the same time, we must admit that these adjectives have
features (meaning, function) that allow us to assign them to a separate
subclass of the adjective. But the features examined
are not sufficient for the
distinction of the category of state within the adjective.
The words of the category of state is a controversial one. Such
words as
asleep, ablaze, afraid, etc. have been often named adjectives,
though they cannot be attributes in a sentence and though their meaning does
not seem to be that of property.
(1) Meaning. The meaning of the words of this type is that of a passing
state a person or thing happens to be in.
(2) Form. The words of the category of state are invariable.
(3) Function.
(a) The words of the category of state most usually follow a link verb
(was asleep, fell asleep). Occasionally they can follow a noun (man alive).
They can also sometimes be preceded by an adverb (fast asleep).
(b) In the sentence, the words of the category of state are most usually a
predicative. (he fell asleep). They can also be objective predicative (I found