ADJECTIVES IN HISTORY, THE ATTRIBUTIVE INTERPRETATION OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Pablo Gmez 1 Filologa Inglesa Lengua Inglesa 1

Introduction
I have chosen adjectives as the topic of my project because they are an essential part of all languages, and they are very important to describe anything to de identified, consequently they are very common in all registers although they are more common in news and academic prose than in conversation. My intention is to show how adjectives are used in academic prose, specifically in a historical text that I have taken from the book Selcted essays of George Rud, The Face of the Crow. Studies in revolution ideology and popular protest. 1988, with preciseness from an article about the differents interpretations of the French Revolution. The reason why I focused on this text is For the classification of the adjectives that I have found in the text I have followed the Longman student grammar of spoken and written English, Douglas Biber, Susan Conrad and Geoffrey Leech, 2002. I have decided to clasificate adjectives following three differents criteria; syntactic, morphological and semantic. Therefore, the analysis will be divided into these three parts. Adjectives are one of the four lexical word classes, as nouns, verbs and adverbs. It is sometimes difficult to spot wether a word is an adjective by looking at it in isolation, because the form of a word does not necessarily indicate its syntactic function ( ), central adjectives have four specific characteristics, however, adjectives that do not fulfil all of these characteristics are called peripheral adjectives. The specific charasteristics of adjectives are; in the first place a morphological characteristic, they can take comparative and superlative forms by means of inflection, adding the morphemes er and est or using the premodifiers more and most; in the second place a syntactic charcteristic, central adjectives can function attributively and predicatively, be part of a noun phrase, modifying a noun, or function as the head of an adjective phrase respectively, peripheral adjective occur in only one of these ways; in the third place there is a semantic characteristic,

Analysis:
In the text that I have chosen there are seventy one adjectives, as I have said before, my work consist of classificate those seventy one adjectives The first point of my analysis is the sintactic classification. As I have noted in the introduction, adjectives can be: 1) attributive, when they modify a noun. E.g discussion.... 2) and they can also be predicative, when they are the head of an adjective phrase. In this case, the adjective phase can performance two different syntactic roles: A) subject predicative, when it complement a copular verb E.g. But the Liberal of 1848 became soured and disillusioned It is the purpose of this pamphlet to consider the main stages of this

B) object predicative that occur with complex transitive verbs, following the direct object(Biber et all, 2002, page 201) which they characterize. However adjectives can fulfil other syntactics roles. They can occur as post modifiers, as noun phrase heads, as linking expressions, as free modifiers and finally, as exclamations. Here, I only consider one of these syntactic roles, the one that I have found in the text, adjectives functioning as noun phrase head. When adjectives act as a noun phrase head they can be modified by an adverb and they can also be premodified. Only a few kinds of adjectives can occur in this syntactic role. These kinds are; first, adjectives that refer to nationalites E. G by no means identifies the insurgents with the French as a whole.

Second, adjectives that have an abstract reference E.g. But the liberal of 1848 became soured and disillusioned.

Third, adjectives that refers to social groups. And fourth, when adjectives have a plural and generic reference E.g. by no means identifies the insurgents with the French as a whole.

(Biber et all, 2002) In the text, the main group of adjectives are those that fuction attributively, as has been noted before these are adjectives which modify a noun, a total of sixty two adjectives have been found, near all that appear. Then, the second group are those adjective that perform a predicative function, in brief these adjectives are the head of adjective phrases, not very numerous, in this case only seven examples are found. Finally, there are two isolated examples of adjectives which fulfil the head of a noun phrase position. The second point of the analysis is the morphological classification. This is the study of adjectives from the point of view of his formation. In the first place there are a group of adjectives called base forms, wich are constituted by only one morpheme . They can be used to form new words adding words endings. E.g. Current, true, old, etc.

In the second place there are an other group called participial adjectives, these are adjectives derived from verbs, using both ing and ed participal forms. 1) participial adjectives in ing often discribes the quality of a person or thing. E.g. conflict-ing, succed-ing, etc.

2) participial adjectives in ed often describe feelings and reactions E.g. repeat-ed, sour-ed, etc.

This type of adjective can be confused with participial forms of verbs. As an example, in the text I have found two words (re-writen and accepted) that look like participial adjectives but they are verbs, part of a passive. (E.g. No period of history has so frequently been re-writen...; The main events of the Revolution have been accepted as facts. Adjectives can also be formed by adding a prefix to a participial adjective. (E.g., Un-flater-ing)

The third group of adjectives is adjectives with derivational affixes, adjectives formd by adding an adjectives suffix to a noun or verb, adjectives can also be formed from other adjectives, especially by using the negative prefixes un-, in- and non- (Biber et all, 2002, page 191). E.g. Noun + suffix: occasion + al, nation + al, etc Verb + suffix: disputate + ious (disputatious), signify + ant (significant), etc. Prefixes + adjective : Un + fortunate, un + flatering, etc. The forth and last group of adjectives is adjectival compounds, these are adjectives formed by the combination of more than one word. E.g. long-standing

It si also interesting from the pointo of view of the morphology, a compound word found in the text form by an adjective and a noun ( turning-point, the highlighted word is the adjective), the gramatical category of the resulting word is noun. When I have classificated adjectives from this point of view (morphology) the outcome has been the following. Unquestionably, base forms are the most represented kind of adjective, with thirty one appearances.

Next, there are twenty seven adjectives which have been formed by adding word endings or derivational suffixes. In this point I have to distinguish between; first, adjectives formed from a verb and a suffix (9); second, adjectives formed from a noun and a suffix (14); and third, adjectives with a prefix (4). Now, the following group are participal adjectives, there are five -ed adjectives and five ing adjective (one of these five adjectives is un-flater-ing, which is also scored as an adjective with a prefix. Finally there is only one compound adjective. The third and last point of the analysis is the semantic classification of adjectives. From the point of view of semantics, Biber divides adjectives in tho different groups, qualitative adjectives also known as descriptors and classifiers adjectives. 1) Descriptors are adjectives that describe color, size and weight, chronology and age, emotion, and other characteristics. They are tipically gradable (Biber et all, 2002, page 197) ( E. g. True, old, unstable, great, late,etc.

2)

Classifiers limit or restrict a nouns referent (biber et all, 2002, page 197). Most of them are non gradable. They can be: A) Relational/classificational/restrictive classifiers wich limit the referent of a noun in relation with other referents E.g. particular, original, etc.

B) Affiliative classifiers wich indicate the national or social group of a noun E.g. French

C) Topical/ other classifiers are the group of adjective wich provide the subject area or specific type of a referent.

E.g.

social, national, feudal, etc.

Biber indicate that semantically speaking, adjective are not clearly distinguish. In some case is the context wich indicate whether an adjective is a descriptor or a classifier adjective. In the semantic classification classifier adjectives, with forty examples, dominate reasonably over descriptors, with thirty one examples.

Conclusion:
Summing up, the first and main conclusion is that in academic prose attributive adjectives are much more common than predicative ajective and of course than other syntactics roles adjectives can fulfil. Attributive adjectives are a good resort to add information to a noun phrase. This is important for a good historian, who has to define with accuracy facts, social groups, etc. and he must avoid making personal evaluations and judgements. The second conclusion refers to the formation of adjectives. The principal group of adjectives are those form by a word and a derivational suffix. The most used derivational suffix is al, very usefull to create new adjectives which are usually specialized words. (E. g., feudal, liberal,...)

This aspect of adjective morphology in academic prose, specifically in a historical text, it is also related with the work of historians in which the creation of new adjectives is basic. The third conclusion is about semantics. The analysis shows that there are more classifiers than descriptors, although this is the field where differences are smaller. The use of classifiers in academic prose is due to the need of specifying the reference of noun phrases.

Interpretations of the French Revolution

No period of history has so frequently been re-written in the light of current preoccupations or been such a repeated battle-ground of conflicting ideologies as the French Revolution. Ever since Edmund Burke, 180 years ago, dipped his pen in vitriol to blast the Revolution in its infancy, generation after generation of Frenchmen, with occasional support from other countries, have joined in the fray and done their bit to disprove the validity of Ranke's contention that history is "what actually happened". The main events of the Revolutionthe meetings of the Notables and of the States General, the Constitution of 1791, the fall of the monarchy, the execution of Robespierre, and the rise of Napoleonhave, it is true, been accepted as facts by even the most incredulous and disputatious; but precious little else. What sort of Revolution was itone of "poverty" or "prosperity"? a bourgeois revolution that overthrew feudalism? a national struggle for liberty, democracy, or "eternal Justice"? or, again, a criminal conspiracy against the old social order? What did it achieve? What was its ultimate significante? What sort of men were its leaders, its supporters and its victims? What part was played in it by aristocracy, middle class, peasants, urban sans-culottes? When did it begin? When did it end? What were its most significant landmarks and turning-points? Was there one single French Revolution or were there several? Questions such as these have been asked and variously answered by succeeding generations and "schools" of historians. It is the purpose of this pamphlet to consider the main stages of this discussion and some of the changing views and interpretations that have arisen in the course of it.

The Pars Commune and Taine

Among those whom the Revolution of 1848 had made enthusiastic for the popular cause was Hyppolite Taine. But the Liberal of 1848 became soured and disillusioned by his experience of the Commune of 1871 and, five years later, he published the most eloquent, bitter and scathing indictment of the great Revolution that had yet been penned. But

whereas earlier conservative historians had presented the Revolution as an unfortunate accident or the product of a conspiracy, Taine saw it as a logical outcome of the dissolution of government and of the old social order (which he, incidentally, condemned); thus anarchy "spontaneous anarchy", as he calls it was let loose and the "mob" took over. At one stage of his narrative, this appears to happen from the very start; elsewhere, he is more specific and dates the final surrender to anarchy and terror from the forcible return of the King to Paris from Versailles on 6 October 1789. "Cette fois on n'en peut plus douter; la Terreur est tablie et a demeur." But he puts forward what was then a highly original explanation of the particular anger and violence of the popular outbreak: one factor was famine which, he claimed, had been chronic since January 1789 and was becoming progressively more severe; another was the high hopes aroused among the people ("la grande esperance") that, as the King himself had ordered the States General to meet and the cahiers to be drawn up, everything would be done to redress their wrongs. This, he believed, was as important as the economic crisis and the long-standing grievance against feudal exaction in prompting the peasants to take the law into their hands and to march on the mansions of their seigneurs to shouts of "Long live the King!" But Taine, unlike Michelet, by no means identifies the insurgents with the French people as a whole: the provincial rioters of 1789 are presented as "contre-bandiers, fauxsauniers, braconniers, vagabonds, mendiants, repris de justice"; and the captors of the Bastille become "la lie de la socit", "la dernire plebe", "bandits" and "vagabonds" epithets that have served the conservative historians of the Revolution ever since. Taine goes further: the leaders, too, the Jacobins and other promoters of the concept of "popular sovereignty" are neither typical Frenchmen of their day nor normally balanced mortals: they tend, in fact, to be social failures and misfits, mainly of the lower midle class, men of unstable character, riddled with dogma and with an exaggerated sense of their own importance. 'Ce sont la nos Jacobins; ils naissent dans la dcomposition sociale, ainsi que des champignons dans un terreau qui fermente." Taine's ideas were to have a great influence on later writers: not surprisingly, the destructive and unflattering picture that he painted of the Revolution appealed to extreme conservatives; but his social analysis proved of interest and value to a later school of radical historians as well.

Bibliography George Rud, Selected Essays of George Rud, The Face of The Crowd, Studies in Revolution Ideology And Popular Protest, 1988 Longman student grammar of spoken and written English, Douglas Biber,

Susan Conrad and Geoffrey Leech, 2002