3. Grammatical categories of pronouns.
Grammatical category of case. In dealing with the category of case in pronouns, we must bear in mind that they need not to in this respect be similar to nouns. Some of them may, and indeed do, have peculiarities which no noun shares.
Some pronouns distinguish between two cases which are best termed nominative and objective. These are the following:
Nominative: I he she (it) we (you) they who
Objective: me him her (it) us (you) them whom
No other pronoun, and, indeed, no other word in the language has that kind of case system.
A certain number of pronouns have a different case system. They distinguish between a common and a genitive case, in the same way as the nouns. These are, somebody, anybody, one, another, and a few more. All other pronouns have no category of case (something, anything, nothing, some, any, mine, hers, etc.)
Grammatical category of number. It will be easily seen that the category of number has only a very restricted field in pronouns. It is found in the pronouns this/these, that/those, other/others, (if not used before a noun).
As to the pronouns I/we; he, she, it/they, it must be stated that there is no grammatical category of number here. We is not a form of the pronoun I, but a separate word in its own right.
There is no grammatical category of number either in the pronouns my/our; his, her, its/their and mine/ours.
There are no other grammatical categories in the English pronouns; there is no category of gender.
4. Adjectives.
Adjectives are words expressing properties and characteristics of object (e.g. large, blue) and, hence, qualifying nouns.
Grammatically, four features are generally considered to be characteristic of adjectives:
their syntactic function of attribute;
their syntactic function of predicative;
their taking of adverbial modifier of degree (e.g. very)
their only grammatical category- the degrees of comparison.
However, not only adjectives possess all of the four features.
Many adjectives are formed from other parts of speech by adding different suffixes the most common of which are:
-able: comfortable
-ible: sensible
-ant: elegant
-ent: dependent
-al: cultural
-ic: atomic
-ish: childish
-ive: attractive
-ful: careful
-less: careless
-ly: friendly
-ous: curious
-y: dirty
In English there is also a large number of adjectives ending in-ing and -ed.
His answer was (very) surprising.
All the adjectives are traditionally divided into two large subclasses: qualitative and relative.
Relative adjectives express such properties of a substance as are determined by the direct relation of the substance to some other substances. E.g. wood-a wooden hut, history- a historical event.
Qualitative adjectives, as different from relative ones, denote various qualities of substances which admit of a quantitative estimation, i.e. of establishing their correlative quantitative measure. The measure of a quality can be estimated as high or low adequate or inadequate, sufficient, optimal or excessive.
Cf: an awkward situation- a very awkward situation
In this connection the ability of an adjective to form degrees of comparison is usually taken as a formal sign of its qualitative character.
Adjective may serve in the sentence as:
an attribute, She had pleasant blue eyes.
a predicative, Her smile was almost professional.
part of a compound verbal predicate, He stood silent.
an objective predicative, I thought him very intelligent.
a subjective predicative, The door was closed tight.
an adverbial modifier, When ripe, the apples are sweet.