This article includes a list of references related reading or external links but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (January 2010) Examples That's an interesting idea. (attributive) That idea is interesting. (predicative) Tell me something interesting. (post-positive) The good the bad and the ugly. (substantive)

In grammar an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to qualify a noun or noun phrase giving more information about the object signified.

Adjectives are one of the traditional eight English parts of speech though linguists today distinguish adjectives from words such as determiners that were formerly considered to be adjectives. In this paragraph "traditional" is an adjective and in the preceding paragraph "main" and "more" are.

Most but not all languages have adjectives. 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) Dutch and French use "honger hebben" and "avoir faim" respectively (literally "to have hunger" hunger being a noun) and where Hebrew uses the adjective "" (zaqq roughly "in need of") English uses the verb "to need".

Adjectives form an open class of words in most languages that have them; that is it is relatively common for new adjectives to be formed via such processes as derivation. However Bantu languages are well known for having only a small closed class of adjectives and new adjectives are not easily derived.

In English the word "adjective" is frequently used loosely for any part of speech including nouns and prepositions when it is used attributively.1 See adjectival phrase. Contents 1 Adjectives and adverbs 2 Determiners 3 Form 4 Adjectival phrases 5 Other noun modifiers 6 Adjective order 7 Comparison of adjectives 8 Restrictiveness 9 Agreement 10 See also 11 References 12 Bibliography 13 External links Adjectives and adverbs

Many languages including English distinguish between adjectives which qualify nouns and pronouns and adverbs which modify verbs adjectives and other adverbs. Not all languages have exactly this distinction however and many languages including English have words that can function as both. For example in English fast is an adjective in "a fast car" (where it qualifies the noun car) but an adverb in "he drove fast" (where it modifies the verb drove). Determiners Main article: Determiner (linguistics)

Linguists today distinguish determiners from adjectives considering them to be two separate parts of speech (or lexical categories) but formerly determiners were considered to be 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 are neither nouns nor pronouns yet reference a thing already in context. Determiners generally do this by 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." See also Post-positive adjective. Predicative adjectives are linked via a copula or other linking mechanism to the noun or pronoun they modify; for example happy is a predicate adjective in "they are happy" and in "that made me happy." (See also: Predicative (adjectival or nominal) Subject complement.) 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." Nominal 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 nominal 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 Main article: Adjectival phrase 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 plain 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 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: quantity or number quality or opinion size age shape color proper adjective (often nationality other place of origin or material) purpose or qualifier 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". 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. Due partially to borrowings from French English has some adjectives which follow the noun as postmodifiers called post-positive adjectives such as time immemorial. Adjectives may even change meaning depending on whether they precede or follow as in proper: They live in a proper town (a real town not a village) vs. They live in the town proper (in the town itself not in the suburbs). All adjectives can follow nouns in certain constructions such as tell me something new. Comparison of adjectives Main articles: Comparison (grammar) and Comparative 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. This is not a comparison of the degree of intensity of the adjective but rather the degree to which the object fits the adjective's definition. 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 Main article: 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 in Spanish la tarea difcil means "the difficult task" in the sense of "the task that is difficult" (restrictive) while la difcil 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). Agreement In some languages adjectives alter their form to reflect the gender case and number of the noun which they describe. This is called agreement or concord. Usually it takes the form of inflections at the end of the word as in Latin: puella bona (good girl feminine) puellam bonam (good girl feminine accusative/object case) puer bonus (good boy masculine) pueri boni (good boys masculine plural) In the Celtic languages however initial consonant lenition marks the adjective with a feminine noun as in Irish: buachaill maith (good boy masculine) cailn mhaith (good girl feminine) Often a distinction is made here between attributive and predicative usage. Where English is an example of a language where adjectives never agree and French of a language where they always agree in German they agree only when used attributively and in Hungarian only when used predicatively. The good () boys. The boys are good (). Les bons garons. Les garons sont bons. Die braven Jungen. Die Jungen sind brav (). A j () fik. A fik jk. See also Attributive verb Flat adverb List of eponymous adjectives in English List of irregular English adjectives Noun adjunct Post-positive adjective Proper adjective References Pullum Geoffrey K. (21 June 2008). "Twenty selected Coalface errors". Language Log. http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/p269. Retrieved 25 March 2011.  Bibliography Dixon R. M. W. (1977). "Where have all the adjectives gone". Studies in Language 1: 1980.  Dixon R. M. W.; R. E. Asher (Editor) (1993). The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (1st ed.). Pergamon Press Inc. pp. 2935. ISBN 0080359434.  Dixon R. M. W. (1999). Adjectives. In K. Brown & T. Miller (Eds.) Concise encyclopedia of grammatical categories (pp. 18). Amsterdam: Elsevier. ISBN 0-08-043164-X. Warren Beatrice. (1984). Classifying adjectives. Gothenburg studies in English (No. 56). Gteborg: 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: 353389.  External links Look up predicative adjective in Wiktionary the free dictionary. Look up adjective in Wiktionary the free dictionary. List of Opposite Adjectives Adjectives and Adverbs Adjective article on HyperGrammar Pratheep Raveendrabathan - List of Adjectives Gallaudet Writer's Handbook - Adjective Order Adjectives - The Qualifiers that Add Emphasis to Your Words v d eLexical categories and their features Noun Abstract/Concrete  Adjectival  Agent  Animate/Inanimate  Attributive  Collective  Common/Proper  Countable  Deverbal  Initial-stress-derived  Mass  Relational  Strong  Verbal  Weak Verb Verb forms Finite  Non-finite Attributive  Converb  Gerund  Gerundive  Infinitive  Participle (adjectival  adverbial)  Supine  Verbal noun Verb types Accusative  Ambitransitive  Andative/Venitive  Anticausative  Autocausative  Auxiliary  Captative  Catenative  Compound  Copular  Defective  Denominal  Deponent  Ditransitive  Dynamic  ECM  Ergative  Frequentative  Impersonal  Inchoative  Intransitive  Irregular  Lexical  Light  Modal  Monotransitive  Negative  Performative  Phrasal  Predicative  Preterite-present  Reflexive  Regular  Separable  Stative  Stretched  Strong  Transitive  Unaccusative  Unergative  Weak Adjective Collateral  Demonstrative  Possessive  Post-positive Adverb Genitive  Conjunctive  Flat  Prepositional  Pronomial Pronoun Demonstrative  Disjunctive  Distributive  Donkey  Dummy  Formal/Informal  Gender-neutral  Gender-specific  Inclusive/Exclusive  Indefinite  Intensive  Interrogative  Objective  Personal  Possessive  Prepositional  Reciprocal  Reflexive  Relative  Resumptive  Subjective  Weak Preposition Inflected  Casally modulated Conjunction Determiner Article  Demonstrative  Interrogative  Possessive  Quantifier Classifier Particle Discourse  Modal  Noun Complementizer Other Copula  Coverb  Expletive  Interjection (verbal)  Measure word  Preverb  Pro-form  Pro-sentence  Pro-verb  Procedure word