THE SEMANTIC CATEGORY 'GRADATION': THE EXTENT OF GRAMMATICALIZATION IN MACEDONIAN AND POLISH

Abstract

The semantic category of gradation belongs to the rare categories functioning both at the level of proposition and its arguments. Its surface exponents are adverbs and adjectives,  the objects of the evaluation are appropriately constitutive members of  propositions and their arguments. The Slavic languages inherited the “classical” semantic paradigm of three components: positive, comparative and superlative and adapted  their  surfaceexponents  to  their  evolving  grammatical  models.  The development  of  these  languages  brought  about  some  new  semantic  types  of gradient  evaluation.  The  constructions  that  attract  attention  are  those  which  link the  means  of  evaluation  with  its  future  planned application.  They  are  present  in both  analyzed  languages,  but  are  more  frequently  used  in    Macedonian  and  its multilingual environment, hence the answer for the problem stated in the title of the paper is in favor of Macedonian.