CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF NON-NUMERICAL APPROXIMATE QUANTIFIERS IN ENGLISH AND ARMENIAN

Abstract

The paper presents a cross-linguistic study of vague quantities expressed by non-numerical approximate quantifiers (non-NumAppQ) in English and Armenian. The research is carried out on two levels: semantic and structural. An attempt is made to reveal the similarities and differences of the constructions with approximators in both languages, with differences more observable on the structural level. Both the English and the Armenian languages exhibit various forms of expressing approximation with non-numerical quantifiers.
The structural study reveals that out of five basic patterns outlined in the research three patterns show almost direct equivalence and two patterns have no counterparts in the Armenian language.