ADJECTIVES

ADJECTIVES ARE DESCRIBING WORDS. They answer primordial questions like: which one?, What kind?, how many?, and what is it like?

In some languages like French or Vietnamese, the adjectives go after the noun. Not so in English... the adjective is almost always in front of the noun.

Which house? .......... That one.
What kind of house? .......... A large, yellow brick one.
How many rooms? .......... There are six rooms.

Types of Adjectives

THERE ARE many types of adjectives including articles, determiners and demonstratives. Some determiners (such as "other") can also be a pronoun.

"Other" is used with uncountable nouns ("other people"), whereas for singular nouns, you must say "the other" or "another"). In this case, "another" would be for indefinite nouns (like any one person), while "the other" is "the special or particular person" that we were discussing before).

Limiting Adjectives

Another type of adjective is the limiting adjective, comprising cardinal numbers, ordinal numbers ("first", "second", "last", etc)...

Restrictive Adjectives

COMPARATIVES & SUPERLATIVES
Beware of empty comparisons.
See exercise on comparatives and superlatives here.

Graded & Non-Graded Adjectives

SOME ADJECTIVES can be shaded by adverbs to describe their degree (for example, "hot"). Others are absolutes (for example, "finished").

Some examples:
Fundamentally different.
Excruciatingly uncomfortable.

Quantifying Adjectives

A QUANTIFIER IS A word or phrase used to talk about quantities, amounts or degree. They can be used with a noun (as a determiner) or without a noun (as a pronoun). Is there any cheese? (any as a determiner) Yes, there's a little. (a little as a pronoun) .

"Least" is the superlative form of "less". There is some debate over the difference between "less" and "fewer". Generally, "less" is used with uncountable nouns, while "fewer" goes with uncountable nouns.

Superlatives are sometimes used to add emphasis without making a direct comparison, although it is frowned upon by some grammarists.

Both "in" and “un” are used as prefixes to mean “not”, but there seems to be no clear rule about which one goes with which adjective. Possibly “un” is supposed to be used with adjectives of Germanic origin, while “in” goes before Latin words, but I can think of many exceptions to this rule (like "unoriginal"), so go figure.

I also remember discussing the difference between “meaningless” and “senseless”. A lot of my students make a mistake with this. While they are both adjectives, there is a significant difference between them. meaningless and senseless. is that meaningless is lacking meaning while senseless is bereft of feeling or consciousness; deprived of sensation; unconscious; insensible.

Adjective Clauses

LET'S CONSIDER the opening sentence of this page: Adjectives are describing words. In this sentence, "describing" is the adjective, but it looks like a verb (it is actually a participial adjective.) It is a present participle, because it always describes. In contrast to a past participle, it is active, and present.

In the above sentence, "describing" is a simple adjective because it is only one word. However, it is possible to rephrase this sentence as an adjective clause (Adjectives are words which describe.) This type of construction is known as a relative clause.

An adjective clause comprises a relative pronoun + Subject (S) + Verb (V), or a relative pronoun acting as a S + V. Unlike ordinary adjectives, such clauses go after the noun they modify.

In the example above, "which describe", "which" is a relative pronoun acting as subject, and "describe" is the verb. Thus, you can see more proof of the link between adjectives and verbs. It suggests again that all adjectives answer What? Who? When? questions about the noun.

Another kind of adjective clause is the participle clause. Like other phrases, they do not contain their own subject. Instead, they comprise a participle, modifier and a pronoun or noun phrase, and can go before or after the noun they modify. Thus:

Decorated with bright lights, the house looked beautiful.
The house looked beautiful decorated with bright lights.

A problem can arise when there are two or more nouns in a sentence, either directly or implied. If the participle clause is separated from the noun it is intending to modify, or if there is no appropriate subject, it can result in a dangling participle. Such sentences are awkward or nonsensical:

Drenched from the rain, the umbrella was opened.

Since the subject of the participle ("the person") is missing from the sentence, the participle is left dangling, leading to confusion. To correct the dangling participle, you could rewrite the sentence to make the intended subject of the participle clear:

Drenched from the rain, I opened the umbrella.

Compound Adjectives

LIKE COMPOUND nouns, compound adjectives are usually separated with a hyphen. They can combine adjectives, nouns or adverbs with each other, or with present and past participles. hen .

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