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 "adjective-equivalent" refers to a sentence element or a phrase/expression working as one adjective.

Noun Cluster

Adjectives are used to qualify/determine nouns, therefore their determined nouns must be present explicitly or implicitly (via pronouns). However, there are instances when qualifying/determining adjectives are missing their determined nouns; consequently, these adjectives become:
A. nouns
B. pronouns

Adjectives are used to "describe" or to "determine" nouns. When they have only descriptive functions, adjectives are not mandatory and they may be marked/isolated by commas; if they have determining functions, adjectives are mandatory and they are never separated/isolated by commas. Note that in many instances qualifying adjectives may take/employ determining functions, depending on the sentence structure.

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 far from being 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 adjectives (subjective or objective complements)

ATTENTION
The following topics related to using adjectives require particular/careful consideration:
1. adjectives and adverbs having exactly the same form
2. adjectives taking 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 (their number, gender, range of applications, and particular instances of case agreement with their determined nouns)
11. forming and using adjective equivalents
12. determining adjectives vs. determining pronouns vs. determining adverbs
13. adjectives' syntactic functions
14. adjectives formed from nouns in synthetic genitive
15. using articles and adjectives

POSITIONING QUALIFYING ADJECTIVES 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 Adjectives Note: although they are position near the verb, these 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".

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

ATTENTION
Placing adjectives within the sentence structure is a complex topic. The few notes presented in this page are far from clarifying 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

ATTENTION
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 points A and C above take three "Degrees of Comparison", as follows:

QUALIFYING ADJECTIVES - DEGREES OF COMPARISON
POSITIVE	COMPARATIVE	SUPERLATIVE
nice	nicer	the nicest
interesting	more interesting	the most* interesting*
important	more important	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:
3.1 superlative relative (the highest/lowest qualities related to others)
3.2 superlative absolute (the highest/lowest qualities of all )

Comparing adjectives is done according to a set of rules--presented in LSEG. Considering the way they comply to 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 (complex) sentences". Following is a fragment from LSEG.

LSEG: qualifying 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 their nouns. All determining adjectives have pronominal equivalent; 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

Fragment from LSEG; using interrogative adjectives.

FORMING ADJECTIVES

Not only that adjectives are used a lot, but it appears the existing wealth of English adjectives is not sufficient. Few common methods used to form new adjectives
(plus adjective-equivalents and custom adjectives) 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 a lot more than just presenting adjectives in details: it explains how to identify/detect them correctly.

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