The Classification of Words

§ 128. The words of an adverb lexeme like soon — sooner— soonest represent three grammemes with one actual grammat-
¹ H. Sweet, op cit , v. 11, § 1883.
² G. Curme, op. cit., p. 130.
90
ical meaning each. Lexemes like forward, yesterday, ahead contain but one word each with the oblique grammatical meaning of the 'positive degree'. There are no adverbs in English with the oblique meaning of the 'comparative' and the 'superlative' degrees. Thus we may speak of but four grammemes in the class of adverbs.
The figures in the table below show their relative frequency of occurrence (per cent). The analysed texts were mostly those of the 20th century. Synthetic and analytical forms have been counted separately.

Gram me me	Form	Representatives	Fre­quency
Positive actual		soon, strongly	45.4
Positive oblique	Ч	forward, yesterday	43.0
Comparative	synth.	sooner, better	7.0
	analyt.	more proudly	1.5
Superlative	synth.	soonest, best	2.3
	analyt.	most strongly	0.8
			100.0

As we see, the relative frequency of adverbs with oblique 'positive degree' meaning is much greater than that of similar adjectives (see § 111).
§ 129. When comparing English and Russian adverbs as parts of speech, one may say that they differ but slightly. Their lexico-grammatical meanings, morphological catego­ries, combinability and syntactical functions are fundamen­tally the same.
Nevertheless, certain distinctions are worth noting

1. 
   The stem-building (lexico-grammatical) morphemes of
   Russian adverbs are somewhat more numerous and varied.
   
2. 
   Among the adverb building morphemes \ve find sevejal
   suffixes of subjective appraisal (-онько/-енько, -окечко/-енечко,
   -oxoHbKOl-ехонько, -овато), which are absolutely alien to
   English.
   
3. 
   The adverbialization of substantival or adjectival
   grammemes, (e. g. шагом, стрелой, весной) is the mosi
   

91
productive way of forming adverbs in Russian ^J, whereas in English it is less common.
4. As to the degrees of comparison one might say that the synthetic form of the superlative grammeme (подробнейше, нижайше, малейше) is no longer used colloquially and is employed for some stylistic purpose. The corresponding English grammeme (oftenest, soonest) occurs in different speech styles.