CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH AND ALBANIAN ADJECTIVES

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. The article is published with Open Access at www.alsjournal.com Abstract. Language is a systematic means of communicating by the use of sounds or conventional symbols. Learning a foreign language is never easy especially when we try to express our thought, opinions, feelings and ideas from mother language to target language. Because English is so widely spoken, it has often been referred to as a “world language” or “lingua franca’. While it is not an official language in most countries, it is currently the language most often taught as a foreign language. Since English language is taught as foreign language in our country learning its grammar is still challenging. Proper grammar is essential for learning and comprehending the second language knowing that grammar is a guide how language should be written and spoken. As basic Grammar deals with parts of speech this paper will concentrate on adjective both in English and Albanian their formation, function, degree, order and semantic classification. This seminar paper deals with contrastive analyses of English and Albanian adjectives and aims at describing and analyzing similarities and differences that exist between them. The methodology of the study is descriptive and contrastive. Even though the English and Albanian languages belong to the Indo-European family they do share similarities and differences both in morphological and syntactical terms.


Introduction
Contrastive analysis (CA) has been first introduced by Charles Fries in (1952), and fully described by Lado in his book Linguistics across Cultures (1957).Contrastive analysis is a systematic branch of applied linguistics which deals with the linguistic description of the structure of two or more different languages.Despite the fact that there are 'linguistic universals' shared among languages "all languages have something in common". 1 It is also claimed that this comparison would identify points of difference or difficulty and provide results that would be important in language teaching.Lado (1957) shares the view that comparative analysis is extremely important in curriculum development, selection of teaching materials, and the identification of problems encountered during learning.
This linguistic contrastive paper aims to simplify the learning process of adjectives and 1 Lado, Linguistics across Cultures 1957, p 239 can be used as orientation material for a deeper understanding of adjectives of both languages.

Adjectives as part of the speech in Albanian and English
Adjectives as a part of speech belong to the open set of words which means they can accept the addition of new morphemes or words through processes as derivation and compounding.According to 'The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language', adjectives typically denote properties of objects, persons, places, etc.: properties relating to age (old, young), size (big, small), shape (round, flat), weight (heav y, light), colour (black, blue), merit or quality (good, bad), and so on. 2n Albanian language 3 the adjective is a part of speech which denote the characteristic features (quality, property and relation) of noun (name, object, and place) and agrees with noun or pronoun in number, gender and case.
Morphological features of adjectives According to morphological structure English adjectives are grouped into: a. Simple -consisting of a single root 2 Rodney Huddleston, Geoffrey K. Most productive way regarding the formation of adjectives in Albanian language is by derivation compounding and through conversion process.However they can be classified as follows: a. Simple-consisting of a single root (gjallë, i keq, i mirë, i parë, i ri, i shëndoshë) b. Derived (prefixes, suffixes, articulation, articulation and derivation at the same time).
c. Compound d.Conversed As we can see from above, both languages share similar characteristics concerning adjective formation.

Formation of English and Albanian adjectives by derivation (affixation)
Derivation is formation of a new word from another word by the addition of an affix (prefix or suffix)

Prefixes
In English language prefixes give to the adjectives negative meaning mostly.The most common prefixes used in English are: im, un, non, and in.E.g., impatient, imperfect, impossible, inevitable, infinite, unhappy, unprecedented, inaccurate, premature, nonexistent.E.g.Tom is unhappy.(Means that Tom is not happy) As we can see in Albanian language the adjectives formed by prefixes do not always have negative meaning while in English is opposite prefixes are used to give word a negative meaning.
Albanian Adjectives formed by prefixes are quite a lot in number but the most productive are: pa, jo , anti-, para, prepa, pro, nder dhe prej. 4lbanian adjectives formed by prefixes can be: 1.By article and prefixes: i paaf- In Albanian language the most productive way of forming adjectives is by adding suffixes.

Substantiation of adjectives in English and Albanian
By substantiation we understand the formation of adjectives from nouns through process of conversation.In English language there are two types of substantiation: 5 -Full substantiation: the adjective becomes the noun and possesses all its categories, E.g. relative, a -relative, n; criminal, a -criminal, n.E.g. a relative pronoun, a criminal minds A criminal lawyer ~ a lawyer specializing in criminal law An atomic scientist ~ a scientist specializing in atomic science A woolen dress ~ a dress made of wool -Partial substantiation: the adjective has only some features of the noun.
Old -the old, young -the young.
In Albanian language two types of substantiation can be distinguished: -Full substantiation: the adjective becomes the noun and possesses all its categories. 6.g.E mira dhe e liga nuk harrohen.Good and evil are not forgotten.
-Partial substantiation: the adjective has only some features of the noun.
As we can there are quite similarities in both languages concerning formation of adjectives by substantiation.

Compound adjectives in English and Albanian
Compound adjectives in English language consist of at least two stems.
They may be of several patterns but according to Bauer 7 they are as follow: 1. Noun + adjective: colour-blind, machine-readable, computer-literate, etc.

The syntactical function of adjectives in English and Albanian
In English language the function of adjectives is known by the position they take in the sentence so, adjectives placed before nous are called attributive adjective and adjective that came after nouns are called predicative adjective.Attributive adjectives function as internal pre-head modifier to a following noun; predicative adjectives function mainly as predicative complement in clause structure: Before nouns are used only in special occasions in order to emphasize person or the object.

Adjective order in English and Albanian
As far we do realize that adjectives describe and modify nouns.However, in order to describe nouns in everyday life we use more than one adjective but in English language there is an order Generally the adjective order in English language is as follows: a E.g.She was a beautiful, tall, young, black-haired, charming, Scottish woman.
In the above example, beautiful is an adjective indicating quality, tall is an adjective indicating size, young is an adjective indicating age, black is an adjective indicating colour, charming is an adjective describing people, Scottish is an adjective indicating origin.On the contrary in Albanian language doesn't exist such an order the adjectives are used freely according to the speaker choice.

Adjectival articles
One characteristic of adjectives in Albanian language is articulation, there is a large number of these adjectives that are called articulated adjectives.In this aspect the English adjectives differ from Albanian adjective they never take article like their counterparts in Albanian.
The articles that adjectives in Albanian language take are: i (masculine), e (feminine) and të (plural form of three genders).

Adjective Number
Adjectives in English do not depend on nouns like Albanian adjective, they do not change if noun is in singular or plural, they stay the same.E.g. White shirt.White shirts.
In Albanian we have two numbers of adjectives: singular and plural.Albanian adjectives depend on the noun it corresponds with, so if the noun is singular the adjective too will be in singular the same is with the plural form too.
Unarticulated adjective form singular and plural form by taiking the ending ë as shown in the example below: E.g. malor -malorë, popullor-popullorë, etc.
The articulated adjectives form singular and plural form by changing article i (masculine), e (feminine) into të.Bahri beci 86

Adjective Gender
Adjectives in English don't have gender, they don't change their form regardless noun gender.On the contrary Albanian adjective have gender depending on noun's gender they are used with, so if noun is in feminine gender the adjective is too so the gender of adjectives is determined by nouns gender E.g.
As we see from examples the article e is used for feminine adjective and also take the ending e depending on noun's gender and article i is used for masculine adjectives and takes the ending i.

Degrees of adjectives in both languages
In English language many adjectives which have more than one sense are either graded or ungraded depending in which sense are chosen. 11Similar situation exist in Albanian language too, some adjective don't have comparative and superlative form. 12g.Dorzë e hekurt, radha e pestë, gazetë e sotme The western part of island, five adult children, political power, legal process The graded adjective in both languages have three degrees: Positive, comparative, superlative.

The positive degree of adjectives
In both languages the positive degree meets the same criteria.The positive degree of adjectives in English and Albanian is the same, so positive adjectives are the base form of adjective which describe nouns (people, objects or things) This building is tall.

Liqeni i Ohrit është i thellë
The comparative degree of adjectives The comparative form of adjectives in English and Albanian expresses a higher degree of some quality which means comparing the quality of nouns (people, objects or things) with another quality.
Eg.This building is taller than our building.
My sister is more beautiful than Jane.Liqeni i Ohrit është më i thellë se liqeni i Shkodrës.
Short adjectives (adjectives with one or two syllables) in English make comparative form by adding est to the end of adjectives and long adjectives (more than two syllables) make comparative form by using more before 11 Collins Cobuild] Susan Hunston, Elizabeth Manning, Gill Francis -Grammar Patterns II_ Nouns and Adjectives (1998, Collins) page 367 12 Beci Bahri.-Gramatika e gjuhёs shqipe, Tiranë 1997, Prishtinё 1998, 2002, page 91   adjectives.In Albanian the comparison form is made by: më i (M) më e (F) and më të (P).As we see the comparison form is different from English to Albanian.E.g.This building is as tall as the other one.
As we see from examples as……as, po aq (adverbs of quantity) show the degree equality of humans or places of the same entity, so indicating that the buildings are of the same height.
This building is not as tall as the other one.
Apart from the degree of equality we have also the degree of inequality in both languages, which shows that two objects are not the same regarding their quality.As we see from examples in English the inequality degree is formed by using not …as while in Albanian by using the adverbs më pak, or me shumë më pak.

The superlative degree of adjectives
Short adjectives in English make superlative form by adding est to the end of adjectives and long adjectives make superlative form by using most before adjectives.In Albanian the comparison form is made by: më i (M) më e (F) and më të (P) and also using adverbs shumë, mjaft, tepër, fort before the adjectives etc.As we see the comparison form is different from English to Albanian.

Semantic features of the adjective both in languages
Semantically adjectives in both languages are classified into two groups: qualitative and relative.
Qualitative adjectives describe objects directly by denoting their shape, size, color or other general characteristics.
He lives in a big house.Ju varën degët e gjelbera mbi kokë.
Relative adjectives describe objects indirectly, through their relations to other objects.

9 1 .
Attributive use: an old car black hair good news 2. Predicative use: The car is old.Her hair is black.The news is good.The position of adjective in Albanian can be placed in two positions either before the noun or after but mostly are used after noun.E.g.Veturë e vjetër.Flokë të zeza.3. Attributive use: E gjora vajzë nuk kishte ku të shkonte.4. Predicative use: Vajza e gjorë nuk kishte ku të shkonte. 10