Page 231 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

ADJECTIVES AN D ADVERBS 217
NONADVERBABLES AND NONCOMP ARABLES
Adjectives can be divided into various semantic classes such as stative and dynamic, and gradable and nongradable. These classifications are impor- tant only inasmuch as their syntactic irregularities are concerned.
The first two semantic classes of adjectives, stative and dynamic, are important and common in academic text because they usually de- note shapes, measurements, colors, or nationalities. Stative adjectives refer to those qualities that cannot be changed by the noun they de- scribe (the possessor; Quirk et al., 1985).
For example,
tall, short, old, young, fat, large, flat, round, square, long, hard, red, yellow, German, Korean
Because academic writing in general employs a high number of descriptors of size that are, in effect, stative adjectives, it is important that L2 writers be mindful of their syntactic idiosyncrasies (Biber et al., 1999; Channell, 1994). From this perspective, an important syntactic characteristic of these items is that they do not derive corresponding manner adverbs. Adverb forms of these adjectives that do exist have completely different meanings (e.g., shortly [soon], hardly [almost not], broadly/largely [generally], widely [in many places/among many people]). The most common academic stative adjectives are long, small, high, low, and large.
To test whether an adverb form of an adjective exists, it can be used in an imperative sentence (e.g., *Be tall/short/old/young/round/long).
On the other hand, dynamic adjectives can be converted to adverbs by adding the suffix -ly (e.g., anonymous—anonymously, arbitrary—arbitrarily, fair—-fairly, feasible—feasibly, legal—legally, neutral—neutrally, objective—objec-
tively, rational—rationally).
Two additional classes of quirky adjectives include gradable and
nongradable. Gradable adjectives can be used for comparisons, and nongradable adjectives cannot:
Gradable more/most complex/drastic/fluent/flexible/intense, vs. Nongradable *more/*most potential/total/uncountable/countless/mam/wrong
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