₸ ADJECTIVES ₸
∞ Definition
An adjective is one of the four lexical Word classes, an adjective describes
the person, thing, place which a noun refers to. We use adjectives to say
what people, things, places are like o seem like. For example, adjectives
can give us information about quality (a friendly person), size (a tall
building), age (a new house), shape (a round box), colour (a white dress),
origin (a German company), etc.
Adjectives can have 2 different kinds of meaning. They can describe
colour, size, age, and some other characteristics, these are known as
descriptive adjectives. For example, white, big, strong, positive. They are
typically gradable. (Very big)
And they are used to divide people or things into particular groups, types,
or classes. These are known as classifying adjectives. For example,
external, American, official, final, human. They are usually non-gradable.
(We can’t say very human or very final)
∞ Formation
Adjectives do not change their form. There are no inflections for number
and gender. For example, an old man, an old woman, old people.
But some adjectives can be inflected to show comparative and superlative
degree, as with big, bigger, biggest.
Although most adjectives do not have a special form that identify them,
there are some endings used to form adjectives from other words. For
example, -ful (beautiful - from the noun beauty), -y (sandy – from the
noun sand), -ial (residential – from the noun resident), -ous (poisonous –
from the noun poison), -esque (picturesque - from the noun picture), -
able (believable – from the verb believe).
We also have adjectives ending in –ed and adjectives ending in -ing.
Adjectives ending in –ed describe people’s feelings. For example: I am
interested in that film, I am surprised, he is bored.
Adjectives ending in –ing describe the characteristic of a person or thing.
For example: I think it was an interesting film, I have surprising news for
you, this match is really boring.
We can form new adjectives through a process called compounding that
creates new words by combining 2 existing words. These new adjectives
are known as compound adjectives. They are formed with:
a) Present participles: a long-lasting journey, he’s a long-living man,
it’s a never-ending story.
b) Past participles: a broken-down car, he’s a single-handed person.
c) Cardinal numbers + nouns: a three-day trip
d) Well/badly + past participle: well-informed people, well-dressed
people
∞ Other characteristics of adjectives
Some adjectives have the same form as adverbs (fast, early, long, hard).
For example, a fast train – he runs fast, an early visit – I went to bed early,
a long wait – we didn’t have to wait long, a hard rock – he works hard.
We can use an adverb of degree in front of most adjectives with the
exception of classifying adjectives. For example, a very large backyard, a
really beautiful dress, a quite boring party.
Some adjectives are used after the to represent a group as a whole, for
example, the rich, the poor, the deaf.
∞ Position of adjectives
According to the position in a phrase or sentence, we can have two types
of adjectives. These are attributive and predicative adjectives. An
adjective is attributive or used attributively when it comes before a noun,
for example, an old house. There are some adjectives such as
main/own/principal/eldest that go only in attributive position, a main
road, my own business.
An adjective is predicative or used predicatively when it comes directly
after a linking verb such as be, for example, he is tall. Some adjectives are
only predicative, for example, afraid, alive, alone, ashamed, upset, ill but
there is sometimes another word of similar meaning that we can use
attributively. For example, the children were soon asleep – the sleeping
children, he is alive – a living person.
∞ Gradable and Ungradable adjectives
Gradable adjectives are those adjectives that have different grades. For
example, tired, busy, difficult. As they have different grades, we can use
adverbs of degree to make them stronger or weaker. For example, I feel
very tired, I feel a bit tired, I am extremely busy, I am not so busy, this is
fairly difficult, this is a bit difficult.
Ungradable adjectives express quality such as perfection, so they cannot
exist in different degrees. For example, perfect, awful, impossible,
brilliant, amazing. We can add them adverbs such as absolutely,
completely or totally to make them more emphatic. For example, it’s
absolutely perfect, it’s completely impossible, he’s totally brilliant.
∞ The order of Adjectives
When two or more adjectives come before a noun, there is a fixed order.
1) Opinion: beautiful, nice, wonderful, excellent, awful, etc.
2) Size: big, small, tall, long, large, short, etc.
3) Most other qualities: clear, busy, famous, friendly, soft, quiet,
etc.
4) Age: new, old.
5) Shape: round, square, fat, thin, wide, narrow, etc.
6) Colour: blue, red, green, black, white, etc.
7) Participle forms: running, missing, covered, broken, etc
8) Origin: American, Chinese, Italian, British, etc.
9) Material: sandy, wooden, paper, plastic, etc.
10) Type: electronic, human, chemical, domestic, urban, etc.
11) Purpose: alarm (clock), tennis (court), walking (boots), etc.
For example:
- A German industrial company. ( origin + type)
- A small black pocket dictionary. (size + colour + type)
- A white plastic alarm clock. (colour + material + purpose)
- A nice tall friendly person. (opinion + size + quality)
- Two excellent public tennis courts. (opinion + type + purpose)
- A beautiful round red phone. (opinion + shape + colour)
- A brown Chinese wooden chair. (colour + origin + material)
- An awful old yellow dress. (opinion + age + colour)