Adjectives

Adjectives

1. Characteristics of adjectives

   • Morphological: some of them have inflection -er and -est in comparision. Derivation with affixes (a-, -y, -ful, -less, -able, -ic). E.g: likely, careful,endless, available, heroic, global.
   • Notional: they qualify things, people and states, providing fuller or more limited meaning. Some can have different degrees: Gradable, nongradable, stative, dynamic, inherent, noninherent.
     • Gradable: they refer to qualities which can be weaker or stronger. Represent a point on scale. E.g: cheap and expensive.
     • Ungradable: they indicate extreme or absolute qualities. They represent the limits of a scale. E.g: brillant, correct, disastrous.
     • Dynamic: denote an action or getting to state. E.g: careful, polite.
     • Stative: they denote a state. E.g: tall, old.
     • Noninherent: do not characterize the referent of the noun directly. E.g: a golden girl
     • Inherent adjectives characterize the referent of the noun directly. E.g: a black coat.
   • functional: they can have an atributive function and position. E.g: a small garden. They can have a predicative function and position. E.g: He seems careless. They can be postpositive when follow the noun or pronoun they modify. E.g: Tell me something funny.

2. An adjective is a word that modifies na noun or pronoun. It usually comes before the nouns it modifies. It can be a word, a phrase, or a clause

   • Adjectives answer the following questions: Which one? What kind? How many? How much? Whose?
     • An adjective may be common or proper. A proper adjective (based in a proper noun) modifies a word with reference to a specific person or place. E.g: Japanese gardens. A common adjective gives a general trait to the word it modify. Sometimes these are formed from verbs, so be particularly careful with words that end in -ed and -ing. E.g: skinny girl.

3. How identify the proper order of adjectives?

   • when we use more than one adjective you have to put them in the right order according to type.
     • the proper order the adjectives in sentences is the following: Number, Opinion, Size, Age, Shape, Color, Origen, Material, Purpose and noun. (NOSASCOMP).

4. Compound adjectives are adjectives comprised by two or more different words to describe a noun in terms of age, depth, weight, price, size, etc. They are adjectives made up of two or more words usually with hyphens between them. E.g: snow-white, special-interest groups, ten-minute, etc.

   • when the words are CAPITALIZED as a titles, we do not hyphenate them. E.g: Contemporary Human Rights Magazine.

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