Adjectives (Лингвистика)

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What is an adjective?

Simply put, an adjective is a word you use to describe a person, place, or thing. An adjective modifies nouns or pronouns. Without adjectives, we wouldn't know if you had a serene vacation or a disastrous vacation. They can also describe the quantity of nouns: many, few, millions, eleven. Let's dive into the intricacies of this important part of speech.

Adjectives Are Information Gatherers

When it comes to function, adjectives are information gatherers. Specifically, they provide further information about an object's size, shape, age, color, origin or material. Here are some examples of adjectives in action:

• It's a big table. (size)
• It's a round table. (shape)
• It's an old table. (age)
• It's a brown table. (color)
• It's an English table. (origin)
• It's a wooden table. (material)
• It's a lovely table. (opinion)
• It's a broken table. (observation)
• It's a coffee table. (purpose)

Adjectives serve another important role: they answer questions like, "Which one?" "How many?" and "What kind?" You can see how they do this job in the following examples:

• Which cat did you see? It was the grey cat.
• What kind of potatoes did you buy? I bought red potatoes.
• How many cars were in the parking lot? There were few cars.
• How many people like ice cream? Most people like ice cream.
• Which spoon did you use to stir the soup? I used the wooden spoon.
• What kind of coffee do you like? I like black coffee.

Adjectives Use Certain Suffixes

A suffix is the ending portion of a word. They often follow familiar patterns. In general, many English adjectives end with these suffixes:

-able/-ible: adorable, invisible, responsible, uncomfortable

-al: educational, gradual, illegal, nocturnal, viral

-an: American, Mexican, urban

-ar: cellular, popular, spectacular, vulgar

-ent: intelligent, potent, silent, violent

-ful: harmful, powerful, tasteful, thoughtful

-ic/-ical: athletic, energetic, magical, scientific

-ine: bovine, canine, equine, feminine, masculine

-ile: agile, docile, fertile, virile

-ive: informative, native, talkative

-less: careless, endless, homeless, timeless

-ous: cautious, dangerous, enormous, malodorous

-some: awesome, handsome, lonesome, wholesome

Substantivation

Derivation without a derivative morpheme has been variously treated by grammarians. It has been customary to speak of the conversion of nouns, adjectives and verbs. The term conversion has been used for various things. A. Kruisinga, for instance, makes reference to conversion whenever a word takes on a function which is not its basic one, as the use of an adjective as a primary (the poor, the British, shreds of pink, at his best). He includes here quotation words (his "I don't know's" and nouns used as pre-adjuncts like stone wall and this does not seem justified. Distinction must naturally be made between wholly and partly substantivised adjectives.

Modern English adjectives may be either wholly or partly substantivised. By wholly substantivised adjectives we mean adjectives wholly converted into nouns. Such adjectives may be preceded by the article, take the plural inflection and may be used in the possessive case, e. g.: a native, the native, two natives, a native's character, etc.

Adjectives only partly converted into nouns take the definite article (as regular nouns do) but are neither inflected for the plural nor can be used in the possessive case. The definite article has also a different function from that it would have when used with a noun: the happy means "happy people" in general. Such substantivised adjectives keep much of their adjectival nature, which we see in the possibility of qualifying them by means of adverbs: e. g. the really happy.

Substantivation of abstract adjectives intensifies the word meaning and often serves stylistic purposes as a colourful means of emphasis in literary style. Converted nouns of this kind are generally used in singular constructions, as in:

• Another shift of the box, and some other had become the beautiful, the perfect.
• He drove slowly, enjoying the quiet of the evening.
• ...The fine, the large, the florid — all off!

Adjective Formation in English Grammar

Adjectives give us more information about people, places, animals and things. Some adjectives can be formed from nouns, verbs and even other adjectives by adding a prefix or a suffix.

Some adjectives can be identified by their endings. Typical adjective endings include:

-able/-ible understandable, capable, readable, incredible

-al mathematical, functional, influential, chemical

-ful beautiful, bashful, helpful, harmful

-ic artistic, manic, rustic, terrific

-ive submissive, intuitive, inventive, attractive

-less sleeveless, hopeless, groundless, restless

-ous gorgeous, dangerous, adventurous, fabulous

Sometimes when adding these endings changes have to be made. Here are some rules for forming adjectives and their exceptions:

Add	Exceptions	Word	Adjective
-al	If ending with an ‘e‘, drop it	Nature Function	Natural Functional
-y	If ending with an ‘e‘, drop it	Ice Oil	Icy Oily
-ful	If ending with a ‘y‘, replace with an ‘i‘	Beauty Peace	Beautiful Peaceful
-ous/-ious	If ending with a ‘y‘, drop it	Mystery Danger	Mysterious Dangerous
-ic	If ending with a ‘y‘, drop it	History Rust	Historic Rustic

Forming adjectives from nouns and verbs

Adjectives can be formed from different words. They can be formed from nouns:

Noun Adjective

accident accidental

danger dangerous

length long

star starry

wind windy

From verbs:

Verb Adjective

enjoy enjoyable

help helpful

obey obedient

play playful

talk talkative

Or even from other adjectives:

Adjective Adjective

comic comical

correct corrective

elder elderly

red reddish

sick sickly

Examples of forming adjectives

• Our house color is a kind of yellow. → We live in a yellowish house.
• He often acts like a child. → He often acts in a childish way.
• The event was a big success. → We enjoyed a successful event.
• We enjoyed the sound of the drum’s rhythm. → We enjoyed the drum’s rhythmic sound.
• She adopted a dog without a home. → She adopted a homeless dog.
• Look out, that plant is poison. → Look out for that poisonous plant.
• It looks like it will rain today. → It looks like we’ll have rainy weather today.
• She always acts with courtesy. → She always behaves in a courteous manner.
• Her hair is pretty. → She has the prettiest hair.
• We go for a walk each day. → We go for a daily walk.

Syntactic Functions of Adjectives

Adjectives may serve in the sentence as:

1) an attribute,

e.g. She had pleasant blueeyes and very long fairhair which she

wore in neatplaits round her head.

Adjectives used attributively usually precede the noun imme-
diately. Generally there is no pause between the adjective and the
noun. Such attributes are called close attributes (see the examples
above).

However, if an adjective does not so much give a permanent
characteristic to its noun but rather refers to the temporary
state, circumstance or condition under which what is said takes
place, it becomes a loose attributeand may be placed in different
positions in the sentence.

e.g. Nervous, the man opened the letter.
The man, nervous, opened the letter.
The man opened the letter, nervous.

The meaning of the above sentence can be interpreted as 'The
man who was nervous, opened the letter*. Loose attributes tend to
approach to the predicative function.

Here are more examples illustrating loose attributes:

e.g. Clever and tactful,George listened to my story with deep concern.

2) apredicative,

e.g. Her smile was almost professional.

The sky was becoming violet.

He was awareof what was going on in the office.

Adjectives used predicatively tend to refer to a temporary
condition rather than to a permanent characteristic.

e.g. She is ill.

The child is asleep.

Note. Note the following sentence pattern which is commonly used to express all sorts of measurements.

e.g. The water was five feet deep.

The train was twenty minutes late.
My watch is three minutes slow.
He is thirty years old.

3) part of a compound verbal predicate,

e.g. He stood silent, with his back turned to the window.
She lay motionless, as if she were asleep.

He rolled onto his back and stared up into the tree where little black cherries hung thick.

4) an objective predicative,

e.g. I thought him very intelligent.

She wore her hair short.

In this function adjectives sometimes express the result of the process denoted by the verb
e.g. The cat licked the saucer dry.

The powder washes the linen white.

He pushed the window open.

She made him happy.

The news turned his hair white.

5) a subjective predicative,

e.g. Her hair was dyed blonde.

The door was closed tight.

The vegetables were served raw, the way he liked.

6) an adverbial modifier,

e.g. When ripe, the apples are sweet.

Whether right or wrong, the man ought to be treated fairly.

If possible, the child should be given the medicine three times a day.

As is seen from the above examples, adjectives used adverbially are all introduced by conjunctions. The phrases which the adjectives are parts of can be treated as elliptical adverbial clauses.

Conclusion

An Adjective is a word that changes a describing so as to a noun or a pronoun to making it more descriptive. In each language, adjectives are vital components of sentences. Using adjectives implies that we can express the nature of any individual or item. Without descriptive words we couldn’t say how any article resembles. Not just pronouns and nouns are the words which are utilized for portrayal of something or some individual.

Furthermore; when we read a paper which is a clear one, adjectives help us to picture the substance of what we read about.

If we consider about importance of adjectives in English language, the following things come to our knowledge.

1. It properly describes the noun. It marks what is the noun is all about? A place, a person or a thing?

2. It also tells some descriptive idea of the same noun so that we can find out the proper meaning and condition of particular article.

3. Adjective totally affects the meaning of a sentence. Its presence makes the sentence more interesting.

At whatever point we utilize adjectives, they make our works more visual and distinctive. We have to utilize them for engaging papers or in our day by day life. Besides; we utilize descriptive words since we need to communicate, things, characters in a decent or awful way. It will stand out enough to be noticed and can make the discourse a decent, a compelling discourse.

Sources

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3) Vaibhavseo, Importance of Adjective in English Language [Электронный ресурс.] - Режим доступа https://medium.com/@hdi.vaibhav/importance-of-adjective-in-english-language-c5bfbb6eecc4 свободный - (30.11.2020)

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