COROLLARY THEOREMS - ENGLISH GRAMMAR: ADJECTIVE

English Grammar Notes #4:

ADJECTIVES

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DEFINITION (fragment from Definition M3 in LSEG)
"Adjective" is the sentence element used to qualify/determine a noun or a noun-equivalent construction. Morphologically, adjectives are noun determiners; syntactically, adjectives are ...

The notion of "noun-equivalent" refers to a sentence element or to a phrase/expression working as one noun.

The following topics are summarily presented in this page:
1. Categories of Adjectives
2. Comparing Adjectives
3. Determining Adjectives
4. Forming Adjectives

ATTENTION
These Grammar Notes are not sufficient to understand the topics presented. For accurate and detailed information we recommend LOGICALLY STRUCTURED ENGLISH GRAMMAR.

CATEGORIES OF ADJECTIVES

First of all, adjectives are:
A. qualifying
B. determining

The group of determining adjectives is a bit more complex; it includes:
B1. possessive adjectives
B2. demonstrative adjectives
B3. interrogative adjectives
B4. relative adjectives
B5. indefinite adjectives

Syntactically, qualifying adjectives are (generally) employed as:
1. attributes
2. predicative complements (subjective or objective complements)

Predicative complements employing (only) adjectives are also known as "predicative adjectives"

NOTE
Particular attention needs to be exercised when dealing with the following instances (details are presented in LSEG):
1. adjectives and adverbs having exactly the same form
2. adjectives requiring particular prepositions
3. adjectives preceded by adverbs
4. adjectives qualifying many nouns
5. adjectives qualifying pronouns
6. positioning adjectives
7. adjectives in comparative sentences
8. adjectives working as subjective complements (predicative adjectives)
9. adjectives working as objective complements (predicative adjectives)
10. using particular adjectives (number, gender, range of applications, and case agreement with the determined nouns)
11. forming and using adjective equivalents
12. determining adjectives vs. determining pronouns vs. determining adverbs
13. adjective's syntactic functions

Another interesting aspect is, adjectives formed from nouns in synthetic genitive (details are presented in LSEG).

QUALIFYING ADJECTIVES POSITION WITHIN THE SENTENCE STRUCTURE
#	Position	Examples
1	Before or after the noun they qualify Syntactically, they are attributes	The new house welcomes us. The house* aflame was a terrible loss.*
2	After particular verbs Syntactically, these are Predicative Complements Note: although they are position near the verb, adjectives still qualify the noun, only.	The man was alive. In this case "alive" refers to the noun "man" although it is positioned near the copulative verb "was".

Adjectives positioned near verbs could be a source of confusion, because that is exactly the way the adverbs work. However, only particular verbs (copulas) allow predicative adjectives, and you should note that adjectives still qualify the nouns, only, regardless of their position within the sentence structure.

Placing adjectives is a complex topic. The few notes presented in this page are far from anything.

Another source of confusion is, some adjectives and adverbs have exactly the same form. For example:
1. We took a fast train. (adjective; "fast" qualifies the noun "train".)
2. The train runs fast. (adverb instance; "fast" qualifies the verb "runs")

Fragment from LSEG: chart, categories of adjectives.

Chart LSEG: categories of adjectives

In the "descriptive" type of grammar books some adjectives are considered "modifiers". That is a semantic interpretation without any morphologic or syntactic functionality. The notion of "modification" creates confusion and should better be avoided.

COMPARING ADJECTIVES

Only qualifying adjectives may be compared. The comparison is performed for:
A. inferiority
B. equality
C. superiority

The point A and C above take three "Degrees of Comparison", as follows:

QUALIFYING ADJECTIVES - DEGREES OF COMPARISON
POSITIVE	COMPARATIVE	SUPERLATIVE
nice interesting important	nicer more interesting more important	the nicest the most interesting the most important

In order to handle adjectives' degrees of comparison appropriately, the following types of comparison are performed:
1. positive (no comparison is performed)
2. comparative (simple comparison)
3. superlative relative (the highest/lowest qualities when related to others) or superlative absolute (the highest/lowest qualities of all )

Comparing adjectives is done according to few rules (not presented). Considering the way they comply with the rules, qualifying adjectives are categorized as being:
1. regular adjectives (if they obey the rules)
2. irregular adjectives (they take particular forms for superiority comparison)
3. relative (qualifying) adjectives (they do not allow comparison)

An important aspect is "using adjectives in comparative sentences". Following is a fragment from LSEG.

LSEG: Adjectives in comparative sentences

DETERMINING ADJECTIVES

Determining adjectives are also named "pronominal adjectives" because they have exactly the same form as (some) pronouns do. Their functionality, however, is different: pronouns replace the nouns, while adjectives accompany and determine the nouns. All determining adjectives have pronominal synonyms (the reverse is not true).

Determining adjectives take no comparison degrees, but they do agree in number, person, gender, and case with the nouns they determine. The most common categories of determining adjectives are:
1. possessive adjectives
2. demonstrative adjectives
3. interrogative adjectives
4. relative adjectives
5. indefinite adjectives

A fragment from LSEG, using interrogative adjectives, is presented in the following picture.

FORMING ADJECTIVES

Few common methods used to form adjectives (or adjective-equivalents) are:
1. derivation
2. composition
3. grammar category conversion
4. adjectives formed from nouns in synthetic genitive

NOTE
The book Logically Structured English Grammar does more than just presenting adjectives in details: it explains how to identify/detect them correctly.

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