DEGREES OF COMPARISON OF ADJECTIVES IN THE ENGLISH, ARABIC AND RUSSIAN LANGUAGES

The aim of this paper is to define similarities and differences among English, Arabic and Russian comparative constructions, namely degrees of comparison of adjectives (DCA). After selecting DCA as the target language structure for research, the contrastive analysis of DCA was conducted in four steps. First, the system of DCA in each language was studied and a brief description was provided. Second, parameters for the contrastive analysis of DCA were defined. They are: the syntactic position of adjectives in a noun phrase, the role of the grammatical categories (number, gender and definiteness / indefiniteness) in forming DCA, the morphological system of DCA, the analytical system of DCA. Third, all DCA were compared according to each parameter. Fourth, the technique called «modeling the results of the contrastive analysis» was applied. In the process of the contrastive analysis of DCA some universal characteristics of comparison of adjectives were found: all the three languages have three degrees of comparison (positive, comparative and superlative) realized through two systems – morphological and analytical, all of them correlate with the grammatical category of number in forming DCA. In a multilingual class English, being the easiest language from the point of view of the way comparative constructions are formed, should be studied first as it helps to positively transfer the knowledge of DCA into more complicated languages like Russian or Arabic. As Arabic has many more similarities with English than Russian as far as DCA goes, it should be introduced next with the Russian DCA crowning the process of their acquisition.