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SUBSTANTIVATION OF ADJECTIVES

Derivation without a derivative morpheme has been variously treated by grammarians. It has been customary to speak of the conversion of nouns, adjectives and verbs. The term conversion has been used for various things.

A. Kruisinga, for instance, makes reference to conversion whenever a word takes on a function which is not its basic one, as the use of an adjective as a primary (the poor, the British, shreds of pink, at his best). He includes here quotation words (his" I don't know's" and nouns used as pre-adjuncts like stone wall and this does not seem justified. Distinction must naturally be made between wholly and partly substantivised adjectives.

Modern English adjectives may be either wholly or partly substantivised. By wholly substantivised adjectives we mean adjectives wholly converted into nouns. Such adjectives may be preceded by the article, take the plural inflection and may be used in the possessive case, e. g.: a native, the native, two natives, a native's character, etc.

Adjectives only partly converted into nouns take the definite article (as regular nouns do) but are neither inflected for the plural nor can be used in the possessive case.

The definite article has also a different function from that it would have when used with a noun: the happy means "happy people" in general. Such substantivised adjectives keep much of their adjectival nature, which we see in the possibility of qualifying them by means of adverbs: e. g. the really happy.

Substantivation of abstract adjectives intensifies the word meaning and often serves stylistic purposes as a colourful means of emphasis in literary style. Converted nouns of this kind are generally used in singular constructions, as in:

96Steel-blue of the fallen evening, bare plane-trees, wide river, frosty year! He turned toward home.

...The fine, the large, the florid — all off! (Galsworthy)

Another shift of the box, and some other had become the beautiful, the perfect. (Dreiser).

He drove slowly, enjoying the quiet of the evening. (Cronin).

In that moment of emotion he betrayed the Forsyte in him — forgot himself, his interests, his property — was capable of almost anything; was lifted into the pure ether of the selfless and unpractical. (Galsworthy)

The impossible was not on her side and she knew it, sensed rightly that it never would be. (Sillitoe)

Cf.: Russian: Все высокое, все прекрасное, Раиса Павловна ... (Чехов)

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Источник: N. M. RAYEVSKA. MODERN ENGLISH GRAMMAR. 1976

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