In
grammar, an
adjective is a word whose main
syntactic role is to
modify a
noun or
pronoun, giving more information about the noun or pronoun's referent. Collectively, adjectives form one of the traditional English eight
parts of speech, though
linguists today distinguish adjectives from words such as
determiners that also used to be considered adjectives.
Not all
languages have adjectives, but most, including
English, do. (English adjectives include
big,
old, and
tired, among many others.) Those that do not, typically use words of another part of speech, often verbs, to serve the same
semantic function; for example, such a language might have a verb that means "to be big", and would use a construction analogous to "big-being house" to express what English expresses as "big house". Even in languages that do have adjectives, one language's adjective might not be another's; for example, while English uses "to be hungry" (
hungry being an adjective), French uses "avoir faim" (literally "to have hunger"), and where Hebrew uses the adjective "זקוק" (
zaqūq, roughly "in need of"), English uses the verb "to need".
In most languages with adjectives, they form an
open class of words; that is, it is relatively common for new adjectives to be formed via such processes as
derivation.
Adjectives and adverbs
Many languages, including English, distinguish between adjectives, which modify nouns and pronouns, and
adverbs, which modify
verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs. Not all languages have exactly this distinction, however, and in many languages (including English) there are words that can function as both. For example, English
fast is an adjective in "a fast car" (where it modifies the noun
car), but an adverb in "he drove fast" (where it modifies the verb
drove).
Determiners
Linguists today distinguish determiners from adjectives, considering them to be two separate parts of speech (or
lexical categories), but traditionally, determiners were considered adjectives in some of their uses. (In English dictionaries, which typically still do not treat determiners as their own part of speech, determiners are often recognizable by being listed both as adjectives and as pronouns.) Determiners are words that express the reference of a noun in the context, generally indicating
definiteness (as in
a vs.
the),
quantity (as in
one vs.
some vs.
many), or another such property.
Form
A given occurrence of an adjective can generally be classified into one of four kinds of uses:
- Attributive adjectives are part of the noun phrase headed by the noun they modify; for example, happy is an attributive adjective in "happy people". In some languages, attributive adjectives precede their nouns; in others, they follow their nouns; and in yet others, it depends on the adjective, or on the exact relationship of the adjective to the noun. In English, attributive adjectives usually precede their nouns in simple phrases, but often follow their nouns when the adjective is modified or qualified by a phrase acting as an adverb. For example: "I saw three happy kids", and "I saw three kids happy enough to jump up and down with glee."
- Absolute adjectives do not belong to a larger construction (aside from a larger adjective phrase), and typically modify either the subject of a sentence or whatever noun or pronoun they are closest to; for example, happy is an absolute adjective in "The boy, happy with his lollipop, did not look where he was going."
- Substantive adjectives act almost as nouns. One way this can happen is if a noun is elided and an attributive adjective is left behind. In the sentence, "I read two books to them; he preferred the sad book, but she preferred the happy", happy is a substantive adjective, short for "happy one" or "happy book". Another way this can happen is in phrases like "out with the old, in with the new", where "the old" means, "that which is old" or "all that is old", and similarly with "the new". In such cases, the adjective functions either as a mass noun (as in the preceding example) or as a plural count noun, as in "The meek shall inherit the Earth", where "the meek" means "those who are meek" or "all who are meek".
Adjectival phrases
An adjective acts as the head of an
adjectival phrase. In the simplest case, an adjectival phrase consists solely of the adjective; more complex adjectival phrases may contain one or more
adverbs modifying the adjective ("
very strong"), or one or more
complements (such as "worth
several dollars", "full
of toys", or "eager
to please"). In English, attributive adjectival phrases that include complements typically follow their subject ("an evildoer
devoid of redeeming qualities").
Other noun modifiers
In many languages, including English, it is possible for nouns to modify other nouns. Unlike adjectives, nouns acting as modifiers (called
attributive nouns or
noun adjuncts) are not predicative; a beautiful park is beautiful, but a car park is not "car". In English, the modifier often indicates origin ("
Virginia reel"), purpose ("
work clothes"), or semantic
patient ("
man eater"). However, it can generally indicate almost any semantic relationship. It is also common for adjectives to be
derived from nouns, as in English
boyish,
birdlike,
behavioral,
famous,
manly,
angelic, and so on.
Many languages have special verbal forms called
participles that can act as noun modifiers. In some languages, including English, there is a strong tendency for participles to evolve into adjectives. English examples of this include
relieved (the past participle of the verb
relieve, used as an adjective in sentences (such as "I am so relieved to see you"),
spoken (as in "the spoken word"), and
going (the present participle of the verb
go, used as an adjective in sentences such as "Ten dollars per hour is the going rate").
Other constructs that often modify nouns include
prepositional phrases (as in English "a rebel
without a cause"),
relative clauses (as in English "the man
who wasn't there"), other adjective
clauses (as in English "the bookstore
where he worked"), and
infinitive phrases (as in English "cake
to die for").
In relation, many nouns take complements such as
content clauses (as in English "the idea
that I would do that"); these are not commonly considered modifiers, however.
Adjective order
In many languages, attributive adjectives usually occur in a specific order. Generally, the adjective order in English is;
So, in English, adjectives pertaining to size precede adjectives pertaining to age ("little old", not "old little"), which in turn generally precede adjectives pertaining to color ("old white", not "white old"). So, we would say "A nice (opinion) little (size) old (age) white (color) brick (material) house". However, some native speakers will say, "a big, ugly desk" (size, opinion) instead of "an ugly, big desk" (opinion, size), for example.
This order may be more rigid in some languages than others; in some, like Spanish, it may only be a default (
unmarked) word order, with other orders being permissible to shift the emphasis.
Comparison of adjectives
In many languages, adjectives can be
compared. In English, for example, we can say that a car is
big, that it is
bigger than another is, or that it is the
biggest car of all. Not all adjectives lend themselves to comparison, however; for example, the English adjective
extinct is not considered comparable, in that it does not make sense to describe one species as "more extinct" than another. However, even most non-comparable English adjectives are still
sometimes compared; for example, one might say that a language about which nothing is known is "more extinct" than a well-documented language with surviving literature but no speakers.
Comparable adjectives are also known as "gradable" adjectives, because they tend to allow grading adverbs such as
very,
rather, and so on.
Among languages that allow adjectives to be compared in this way, different approaches are used. Indeed, even within English, two different approaches are used: the suffixes
-er and
-est, and the words
more and
most. (In English, the general tendency is for shorter adjectives and adjectives from
Anglo-Saxon to use
-er and
-est, and for longer adjectives and adjectives from
French,
Latin,
Greek, and other languages to use
more and
most.) By either approach, English adjectives therefore have
positive forms (
big),
comparative forms (
bigger), and
superlative forms (
biggest). However, many other languages do not distinguish comparative from superlative forms.
Restrictiveness
Attributive adjectives, and other noun modifiers, may be used either
restrictively (helping to identify the noun's referent, hence "restricting" its reference), or
non-restrictively (helping to describe an already-identified noun). In some languages, such as
Spanish, restrictiveness is consistently marked; for example, Spanish
la tarea difícil means "the difficult task" in the sense of "the task that is difficult" (restrictive), while
la difícil tarea means "the difficult task" in the sense of "the task, which is difficult" (non-restrictive). In English, restrictiveness is not marked on adjectives, but is marked on relative clauses (the difference between "the man
who recognized me was there" and "the man,
who recognized me, was there" being one of restrictiveness).
See also
Bibliography
- Dixon, R. M. W. (1977). Where have all the adjectives gone? Studies in Language, 1, 19–80.
- Dixon, R. M. W. (1999). Adjectives. In K. Brown & T. Miller (Eds.), Concise encyclopedia of grammatical categories (pp. 1–8). Amsterdam: Elsevier. ISBN 0-08-043164-X.
- Warren, Beatrice. (1984). Classifying adjectives. Gothenburg studies in English (No. 56). Göteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis. ISBN 91-7346-133-4.
- Wierzbicka, Anna. (1986). What's in a noun? (or: How do nouns differ in meaning from adjectives?). Studies in Language, 10, 353–389.
