ON QUALITATIVE NATURE OF WORDS AND THEIR ABILITY TO GRADUATION (BY THE MATERIAL OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE)
The author discusses the content-formal category of “quality”, considered in relation to the category of “quantity”, emphasizes the qualitative nature of words in the light of the genesis and formation of the parts of speech, by the material of the English language analyzes the multi-level methods of absolute (implicit) and relative (explicit) expression of quality criterion gradation, and concludes that the semantic heterogeneity, and phenomenon of speech parts transposition, or the actualization of graded or potentially graded quality semes make explicit the ability of words belonging to different parts of speech to graduation.