체코어와 슬로바키아어 비교급ㆍ최상급의 파생 패러다임과 화용적 가능

On the Derivational Paradigms of Comparatives and Superlatives and Their Pragmatic Functions in the Czech & Slovak Languages

This paper aims to analyze how comparative and superlative forms of adjectives and adverbs are derived in Czech and Slovak, both of which have a high degree of mutual intelligibility, and to investigate the similarities and differences in their derivation and usage from the pragmatic point of view. In both languages, adverbs are not subject to inflection, but comparative and superlative forms of adjectives are subjected to inflection as their positive forms. Derivation belongs to the category of the formation of a word, but the usage of comparative and superlative forms of adjectives or of sentences with comparative meanings with positive forms or negative comparisons should be considered in their communicative function, and on this basis, their various meanings that are reflected from their underlying semantic structure must also be investigated. The derivational paradigm of comparative adverbs in the Czech language is regular and the suffixes for the comparative adverbs differ from those of the comparative adjectives. In the Slovak language, comparative-adverbs are related to homonymous expressions, which have the same form as the neuter adjective singular. Sentences with positive adjectives in combination with quantitative adverbs semantically express emphasis or comparison, which describes the excess or shortage of a specific criterion. This means that not only functional comparative sentences with comparative forms of adjectives and adverbs but also the semantic feature of quantitative adverbs, conjunctions or negative comparisons with comparatives can represent the semantic comparative or superlative sentence. So in the pragmatic and common use of language, grammatical sentences with comparative adjectives or comparisons derived from the semantic feature of words in sentences sometimes have no fixed boundary. In the pragmatic functions of comparatives or superlatives, the Czech and Slovak languages share similarities in most cases. In these two languages, the positive degree also plays a role as a superlative indicator with lexical or grammatical elements. Implicative comparative or superlative sentences show that lexical semantics is closely bound for the communicative function. Aside from the grammatical functions in which comparatives of adjectives or adverbs are used, specific characters in comparative sentences that appear as a dependent context prove that the lexical meaning of the word is sent as input to the speaker through the structure of grammatical function and then yielded as output in the form of a reproduced semantic class. Explicits, implicatives, comparatives, and superlatives cover not only a grammatical function derived from word-formation, but also reflect the fact that the boundary of these two categories that have communicative functions as a common denominator can be flexible in pragmatic functions.