Adjectives in English

Categories, use and formation of adjectives in English

Index :	Types of adjective	Use of adjectives	Adjectives in the plural
	Forming adjectives	Comparison of adjectives	Gradation of adjectives

What is an adjective? 

■ Types of Adjective : determining or descriptive

1. Determining adjectives :

Also called limiting adjectives, determining adjectives are words that are generally classed in the family of determiners, and are dealt with elsewhere:  there is a limited number of these words. They are notably possessive adjectives (such as my, their), numerals and quantifiers (such as one, two, three, every, many), demonstrative adjectives (such as this or that),  interrogative adjectives (such as which). To learn about the use of these determining adjectives, please consult the appropriate pages.

2. Descriptive adjectives : qualifying or classifying

When we talk of adjectives, we generally tend to mean "descriptive adjectives".  These are adjectives such as big, English, wonderful, words that describe the permanant or perceived qualities of a noun; their number is unlimited. New descriptive adjectives enter the language every day, often in the fertile world of slang.

   There are two categories of descriptive adjectives;

• 2.1. qualificative or qualifying adjectives , such as big,  nice, complicated  which express the passing or perceived qualities of a noun, and
• 2.2. classifying adjectives (including absolute adjectives) such as married, second, hydraulic, unique, dead which express permanent qualities or absolutes.

   Qualifiying adjectives are "gradable", i.e. it is possible to graduate their intensity, by the addition of an adverb of degree, such as very, quite, enough; most qualifying adjectives can also be put into comparative or superlative forms (big, bigger, biggest).
    Classifying adjectives cannot normally be graded: a person is either married or  not, or dead or  not; he or she cannot be "very married", nor "more dead" than another person, at least not under normal usage of the words.
    That being said, many adjectives can be used either as qualifying adjectives, or as  classifying adjectives, depending on the context. Take the example of the adjective old.
In the first two examples above, old is a perceived quality, and therefore gradable, in the third old has an absolute value, with the meaning of former or previous.
See gradation and comparison of adjectives below.

■ Use of adjectives : attributive or predicative

Adjectives are used in two main ways; they can either be attributive or they can be predicative.

Attributive adjectives :

This is the most common use of adjectives, standing next to a noun in a  noun phrase. In English, simple and complex adjectives almost always come before the noun .

Exceptions:  adjectives that follow nouns or pronouns. (postpositive adjectives)

There are only a very small number of exceptions,

• a  A few adjectives such as concerned  involved, present and responsible, which have a particular meaning when they come after a noun.
• b. Some adjectives, notably participles, which can follow a noun when they stand as the contraction of an unexpressed relative clause. (examples 3 & 4)
• c. Adjectives that qualify pronouns (examples 5 & 6) must follow.
• d. Cases in which old and tall follow the noun. (example 7)
• e. The other important case when an adjective will follow a noun is when the adjective is postmodified by a prepositional phrase. (examples 8 & 9)

 For details on the ordering of adjectives within a noun group, see adjective order.

Predicative adjectives

Adjectives are said to be predicative when they are used as the complement of the verb to be, or other similar verbs such as  get, become, grow,  etc.

Adjectives in the plural

In English, adjectives never take a plural inflexion (s) whether they are used attributively or predicatively.

The same rule applies to some adjectives used as nouns.
We talk about  the poor, or the living, or the wounded  We cannot say the poors  or the livings,  or the  woundeds.

  On the other hand, with colours, specially when referring to teams, adjectives used as nouns do take a plural  s  .

■ Formation of adjectives in English

Many adjectives are lexical words in their own right, i.e. they exist independently of any other word, or are the root word of a word family. For example good, bad, ugly.
Other adjectives are inflected forms of other words, derived notably from verbs. For example charming, lost. Other adjectives can be formed from nouns, for example beautiful (from beauty) or motionless (from motion), or even from other adjectives (for example yellowish).
    One of the beauties of the English language is the simplicity with which words can be formed from other words: all that is needed is to add the appropriate ending, and a new word is made. Here are some examples.

Comparison of adjectives

Many qualifying adjectives can be used in a comparative or a superlative form. In most cases, the comparative form of an adjective is made with the word  more, and the superlative form with the word most.  
   But with most common short monosyllabic adjectives, and some two-syllable adjectives, the comparative is made by adding the ending -er, and the superlative with the ending -est.  There are two common adjectives with irregular comparative and superlative forms: good, better, best, and bad, worse, worst.

Gradation of adjectives

Qualifying adjectives can be graded by adverbs of intensity or of degree, and by some other adverbs. The most common adverbs of intensity are:
    quite, rather, fairly, very, extremely, highly 
These adverbs come before the adjective.  But note the following points:

• Enough: qualifying an adjective, enough comes, exceptionally,  after the word it qualifies (examples 6 and 7). (Qualifying a noun, enough comes before the word it qualifiees) ► See Enough
• Rather and quite : used attributively, quite and rather can either follow the article, or come before the article: i.e. we can choose between a rather good book and rather a good book,  or quite a nice guy and a quite nice guy.  With rather, the choice is generally open, with quite it is more usual to say quite a than a quite.

    Adjectives that are in the comparative form can be modified by intensifiers such as much, far and sometimes by adverbs of degree (examples 8).
    Some kinds of adjectives, notably participles, can be modified by a wide range of adverbs (examples 9 and 10).
Classifying adjectives can not normally be graded, though there are some circumstances where grading is possible .  Compare the three examples below using the classifying adjective electric. Normally something is electric or it is not electric; it can't be very electric or quite electric...... However it can be partly electric.