What the adjective is and what it does

When you want to give more information about something than you can give by using a noun alone, you can use an adjective to identify it or describe it in more detail. Thus adjectives may be defined as words which express properties and characteristics of objects, e.g. simple, large, black, wooden, economic, progressive, philosophical, etc.The adjective is a part of speech which modifies the noun.

• Adjectives can express qualities (large, modern, quiet), physical and emotional states (cold, busy, friendly, happy), origin (American, Asian), opinions (excel lent, fantastic, cool), frequency (weekly, daily, regular). According to their morphological composition adjectives can be simple (young, new, fresh), derived (careful, woody, rainy), compound (well-known, much- praised, man-made).

• All adjectives fall into two groups — qualitative and relative. Qual­itative adjectives denote properties of a substance directly (great, calm, gold, beautiful). Relative adjectives describe properties of a substance through relation to material (woolen, wooden, golden) to place (Italian, European), to time (ancient, contemporary).

• The Place of Adjectives in the System of Parts of Speech.

Adjectives refer to the group of notional words. That means that they have distinct lexical meanings and perform independent syntactic functions in the sentence (mainly those of an attribute and a predicative, thus entering a noun-phrase or a verb-phrase).

• Grammatical Characteristics of English Adjectives.

Adjectives are mostly used:

• attributively when they come

• before a noun,

• The October carnival gave its faint distant din to the sounds of the night (Rice 1990: 108).

• Incredible, how once upon a time his future was invested in abstruse poems and unpublishable essays, instead of this vast and comfortinv tract of land, this irreducible, fertile, solid-underfoot foundation (Faber 2002: 609).

• I can only repeat that I do assuredly feel, even on this short acquaintance, a stranee. half-willing, half-unwilling liking for the Count (Collins 1994: 198);

• predicatively when they

• come after a link verb a) be, become, seem, b) appear,feel, get/grow ( become), keep , look ( appear), make , smell, sound,taste, turn: etc.,

• denote temporary states ill, well, unwell;

• possess the prefix a-: afraid, alike, alive, alone, asleep, awake, aware (of), ashamed.

• She doesn ’t look very well today.

• I feel faint. — Are you ill?

• We are aware that he is ashamed.

• They’re young, ambitious and rich but their lives hide an aching loneliness (Fielding 2001: 244).

• That was it! I thought, feeling that whatever it was in the bag was hard and lifeless and unmoving - and a birdcage would be all that (Irvingl989: 48).

• Silas knew the stakes were incalculable, and yet what the Teacher was now commanding seemed impossible (Brown 2003: 29).

• Most adjectives take adverbial modifiers of degree (very, too, extremely, quite, so, unusually, absolutely, completely, nearly, etc.), e.g. ‘ This is very bright and earlv on a Sunday morning for a phone call. Yes, it is an absolutely beautiful day. What can we do for you?’’ (Fielding 2001: 164). ‘Mark was just saying you must feel dreadfully uncomfortable with all these older chaps around <...>’ (Fielding 2001:170~). His father was so old. His mother was so young (Rice 1990:20). ‘Well, Miss Halcombe, the pleasure of accompanying you was too great a temptation for me to resist <...>’ (Collins 1994: 241).

Note: We can make adjectives more extreme by using adverbs such as very and absolutely, e.g. Their house is very big. But their garden is absolutely enormous. Careful! We cannot say absolutely big because absolutely only goes with strong adjectives, and we cannot say very enormous because enormous already means very big. The following adverbs can be used: very tired, absolutely exhausted, quite good, absolutely freezing, really cold, really wonderful.

• The only grammatical category English adjectives possess is degrees of comparison,

• ‘His money is kept in the bank, and it's growing bigger every day ’ (Faber 2002: 602).

• Tonio drew back feeling the oddest throbbing inside of him, the strangest vulnerability (Rice 1990: 236). Something new came into his voice - harder, more intense (Kellerman 2003: 181).

• Note on link verbs

• A problem with verbs in B(b) above is that when they are not used as link verbs they can be modified by adverbs in the usual way. This confuses the student, who often tries to use adverbs instead of adjectives after link verbs. Some examples with adjectives and adverbs may help to show the different uses:

• He looked calm (adjective) = He had a calm expression.

• He looked calmly (adverb) at the angry crowd. (looked here is a deliberate action.)

• She turned pale (adjective) = She became pale.

• He turned angrily (adverb) to the man behind him. (turned here is a deliberate action.)

• The soup tasted horrible (adjective). (It had a horrible taste.)

• He tasted the soup suspiciously (adverb). (tasted here is a deliberate action.)

• Some adjectives can be used only attributively or only predicatively, and some change their meaning when moved from one position to the other.

bad/good, big/small, heavy/light and old,	used in such expression* as bad sailor, good swimmer, big eater, small farmer, heavy drinker, ligh sleeper, old boy/friend/soldier etc., cannot be used predicatively without changing the meaning: a small farmer is a man who has a small farm, 1 but1 The/farmer is small means that he is a small man physically.
little, old and young	are often used, not to give information, but as a part of an adjective-noun combination. They are then placed next to their nouns: Our nephew is a nice little boy. That young man drives too fast. Little + old + noun is possible: a little old lady. But little + young not. Adjectives of personality/emotion can precede or follow young/old: A young ambitious man an ambitious young man
chief, main, principal, sheer, utter	come before their nouns,
frightened	may be in either position
afraid and upset adrift, afloat, alike, alive, I alone, ashamed, asleep.	must follow the verb
early and late	The meaning of early and late may depend on their position: an early/a late train means a train scheduled to run early or late in the I day.
poor	poor meaning ‘without enough money’ can precede the noun or follow the verb. poor meaning ‘unfortunate’ must precede the noun poor meaning ‘weak/inadequate’ precedes nouns