Adjectives
in English - Categories,
use and formation of adjectives in English
What is an
adjective?
An adjective
is a word that defines, qualifies or modifies the meaning
of a noun, or more rarely of a pronoun. It expresses the qualities or
attributes of the word it qualifies. There are two main categories
of adjectives: a) determining adjectives, and b)
descriptive adjectives .
■ Types
of Adjective
1. Determining adjectives :
Also called
limiting
adjectives, these are words that are more often
referred to as
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
Descriptive adjectives (such as
big,
English, wonderful)
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 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.
Examples:
- My car is
very old
(qualifying, with a noun)
-
He is intelligent
(qualifying,
with a pronoun) see Pronouns)
-
The old
computer was much quieter than the new
model (classifying)
In
the first example above,
old
is a perceived quality, and therefore gradable, in the second
old has an absolute
value, with the meaning of former or previous.
See
gradation
and
comparison
of adjectives
below.
■ Use of
adjectives
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 .
Examples:
- The
big
metal box
- My
dear old grandfather .
- A
very modern plastic dish.
- An
easily recognisable face.
- A
pink and green dress
- A
not-too-infrequent event.
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)
Examples:
- All
the people concerned were told to leave the room.
- The
children present did not like the show. (=The children who were
present ....)
- He's
the last man standing.
- There
are only three cakes left.
- I
want to give you something special
- That
would be quite understandable to anyone intelligent.
- The
man is two metres tall. I'm 20 years old.
-
I bought all the bottles left
in the shop.
-
He was a man proud
of his success
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.
Examples:
- The
result was magnificent.
-
My girlfriend is beautiful .
-
The weather is getting colder.
-
I grew fonder of London after living there for a month.
In English, adjectives
never
take a plural inflexion
(s),
not even on the rare occasions when they are used as nouns, such as in
The
poor. We cannot say
the poors.
■ 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.
Examples:
- Unthinkable,
doable, mendable, possible, plausible - with -able or -ible
-
Careless, fruitless, homeless, motionless - with less
-
Beautiful, hopeful, wonderful, awful, blissful - with ful
-
Soggy, foggy, lazy, stormy,
skinny, bloody, - with -y
-
Smallish, greenish, darkish, - with -ish
-
Distinguished, bored, displaced, contented, squared - with -ed
-
Challenging, alarming, amazing, exciting - with -ing
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.
Examples:
- Careful,
more
careful, most careful
-
Difficult, more
difficult, most difficult, Certain, more certain, most certain
-
Hard,
harder, hardest, Black, blacker, blackest, Old, older, oldest,
Clever, cleverer, cleverest,
- Large,
larger, largest (just
add -r and -st to adjectives ending in
e)
-
Big,
bigger, biggest , hot, hotter, hottest (final p t k b
d g n
& m are doubled unless proceeded by a long vowel, or
diphthong, as in
harder or quieter)
-
Pretty, prettier,
prettiest , heavy, heavier, heaviest (adjectives
ending in y have inflected forms in -ier and -iest)
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).
Examples:
- I'm
quite certain I
left my hat in the car.
-
This is a rather good restaurant OR
this is rather a
good restaurant.
-
It's very clear that you have read the book already.
-
This is a highly complicated situation to be in.
-
This situation is highly complicated.
-
OK, that was a clear enough reply.
-
Is the door wide enough to get through ?
-
That was much better than last time. It's rather better than
I expected.
-
They are a newly married couple.
-
He made a carefully worded statement.
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