УДК 81.371

TO THE PROBLEM OF STRUCTURAL PECULIARITIES OF COMPARATIVES IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

№19,

Филологические науки

Бастрыкина Ольга Владимировна
Давлетов Александр Денисович

Ключевые слова: COMPARISON; STRUCTURAL OUTLINE; OBJECT; FEATURE OF COMPARISON; IDENTIFICATION; CONTRAST.

Аннотация: The aim of our research and report today is to analyze the logical structure of a comparison on order to reveal its basic and most evident elements.

The structural outline of comparison distinguishes the following elements:
• The object under the process of comparison;
• The object, which is compared to the first object (sometimes called the subject);
• The feature, according to which objects are compared – the key element of comparison.

Let’s turn to an example.
1. Although nuclear weapons are clearly more powerful (military effective) than conventional munitions, political restrictions preclude their use under most circumstances (C.D. Wills).
The subject here is “nuclear weapons”, the object – “conventional munitions”, the basic comparison feature is the usage power of this or that type of weaponry from the military point of view “more powerful”, “military effective”.

Any object can be compared to another one if they have a common feature. For example:
2. Deployment of ground forces represents a major step that Americans are usually hesitant to take, even when the stakes are very high – as in the case with Rwanda (C.D. Wills).
The subject is the important step from the Americans, which they are hesitant to take, the object – the Americans’ actions in Rwanda and the feature of comparison is the degree of risk – “the stakes are high”.

Comparison may be also classified into specific and conventional (the system by Stepanov, 1965). Conventional comparisons are referred to as set expressions, for example:
3. (a sergeant about an unshaved soldier) “Then why are you looking like It is important to mention such types of comparison as identification and contrast (the classification by Shirokova, 1966).

We may turn to one more example now:
4. As Benjamin Lambeth lamented, “There sure must be more imaginative ways of thinking about the changing relationship between air and land power than simply in reductionist either-or terms” (C.D. Wills).

This sentence shows the contrasting relations between two objects – the power of the Air Forces and that of the Ground Forces. The basis of comparison is the interrelation between them (“the changing relationship”).

So, the analysis of comparative structures in the English allows us to conclude that the logical structure of comparison is represented by: the Subject – the first structural element, something that is being compared, the Object – the second element, something to which the first one is compared to, the common feature of comparison and sometimes the Result – based on extralinguistic factors.

Список литературы

  1. Степанов Ю.С. Французская стилистика. М., 1965.
  2. Широкова Н.А. Из истории союзных конструкций, выражающих сравнения. Казань, 1966.
  3. Air power, Afghanistan, view. Craig D.Will’s Lieutenant Colonel, USAF. Air University Press. Maxwell airforce base, Alabame 36112-6615. November 2006.
  4. Humor in uniform. Военный юмор. Книга для чтения на английском языке. Вып. 12. Сост. Г.А. Судзиловский. М., Воениздат., 1970.