Adjectives are a basic part of speech. Although, the learning writers become familiar with them in their early stage of writing, yet adjectives’ structural characteristics are not commonly in their reach. These writers grasp these aspects gradually as they grow in the area of writing (Guinlist). Particularly, these aspects of adjectives are integration of adjectives into sentences, and meaning description-based categories of adjectives. Besides, learning of adjectives’ derivation and morphological structure, advanced characteristics, meaning subtleties and human description are also time taking. This post has been composed keeping all these characteristics of adjectives in view.
It is important to note that adjectives not describe nouns but what the nouns stand for i.e., people, things, concepts, or places. When it is said that adjectives modify nouns, it means they adjust or clarify the meanings of the nouns which they are associated with.
1. Integration of Adjectives into sentences
Adjectives carry various formal properties, i.e., the way they get integrated into sentences. For example:
i. Adjectives mostly stay before nouns with attributive function. When they are in this position, they pre-modify the head nouns in noun phrases. This position of adjectives is known as attribution position. In this construction, a determiner (a, an, the, including zero article) can precede the adjectives (Mohlaroyim, 2024). For example:
a. The tall buildings on the river side always attract me.
b. We ate spicy food.
ii. Adjectives can be placed after a linking verb (be, appear, feel, seem, consider, etc.) to describe or complement the subject or object of the verb. Adjectives’ this position is called predicative position. For example:
a. The food tasted delicious.
b. They found the doctor quite unprofessional.
iii. At times, adjectives are placed immediately after indefinite pronouns or in certain set phrases. This position is known as postpositive position. For example:
a. This time, I want to do something different.
b. This van is the only vehicle available for travelling to the airport.
It is important to note that when adjectives stay in the various positions as mentioned above, they may be simple, cumulative, or compound adjectives. For example:
a. It is an important step. [Simple Adjective]
b. I visited grand old buildings in Egypt. [Cumulative Adjective]
c. He took a twenty-feet jump. [Compound adjective]
2. Meaning Description based Categories of Adjectives
In terms of the description of their meanings, adjectives are classified into two categories: scalers (gradables) and non-scalers (non-gradables or absolute adjectives). The scalers describe the qualities which can be measured, compared or the ones that exist with different intensities. Thus, these adjectives are with full comparison possibilities (Raskin and Sergei Nirenburg, 1995). Contrarily, the non-scalers represent fixed limits, extremes or classifications. These cannot be measured in degrees since these carry relatively ambiguous qualities. The non-scalers can be placed into three subclasses. The first subclass indicates proper names (e.g. Italian border, Shakespearean style, etc.). The second indicates event-related adjectives that are derived from verbs, (e.g., overwhelming, from ‘to overwhelm’). The third includes relative adjectives whose meanings are based on the corresponding nominals, e.g., electric from the nominal electricity.
2.1. Characteristics of Scaler Adjectives
i. The scaler adjectives can be pre-modified by certain intensifying adverbs, e.g. very, quite, extremely, etc. For example:
a. Today sand is very hot.
b. He is quite happy with his job.
c. The bus driver appeared extremely inattentive.
ii. These adjectives can stay in comparative (-er, more) and superlative (-est, most) mode as well (Quirk et al., 1985). For example:
a. He looked a smarter guest in the event.
b. Akbar is the most capable engineer of this company.
2.2. Characteristics of Non-scaler Adjectives
Non-scalar adjectives represent fixed values or unchanging condition of entities. Thus, these adjectives cannot be modified by very or extremely. However, these can be intensified by absolute modifiers such as completely, totally, utterly, or absolutely. For example:
a. The glass is completely filled with water.
b. He was utterly unconscious.
3. Derived and Non-Derived Adjectives
Adjectives can be derived and non-derived both. For example, small, bright, sweet, etc. are non-derived adjectives. On the other hand, childish, natural, frightful, etc., are derived adjectives (Al-Nuaimi and Izreji, 2022).
3.1 Typical Endings of Derived Adjectives
Typical endings (e.g., -al, -ive, -ful, -y, etc.) are a common feature of derived adjectives as in critical development, submissive child, dutiful employees, spicy food, etc. However, many adjectives are devoid of these endings as in strict discipline, defiant employees, slow learner, etc. The aforementioned endings are not the ones that are found on adjectives only, they are also found on other type of words, e.g. college principal, drive, bucketful, fly.
4. Morphological Structure of Adjectives
Morphologically, adjectives can be put into three categories, i.e., variable adjectives, invariable adjectives and irregular adjectives (Ukpabi, 2014). Variable adjectives take inflectional morphemes (i.e., -er and -est) and these morphemes, mark their comparative and superlative degrees. As far as invariable adjectives (e.g., blue, chilly, etc.) are concerned, they do not take inflectional morphemes (i.e., -er and -est). Instead, they take free lexical items (e.g. more/most or less/least) for showing comparative and superlative degrees. Further, some invariable adjectives like, perfect, infinite, dead, unique, etc., do not take more/most or less/least. In addition to the variable and invariable adjectives, there is a class of irregular adjectives. The structure of the irregular adjectives is not constructed on the basis of any particular morphological rule. These adjectives are based on quite irregular patterns such as little, less, least; far, farther, farthest, etc.
5. Advanced Characteristics of Adjectives
Adjectives have a number of advanced characteristics which have significant impact on the quality of texts. The detail of these characteristics is given below.
5.1 Adjectives’ Resemblance to Verbs
Some adjectives carry verb characteristics, i.e., noun describing nature. The same characteristic is shared by verbs when they are in the participle form, e.g. running and captured. In addition, adjectives can act like a verb when they are combined with be (is, are, etc.) in a sentence. For example, is negligent and is clear correspond to the verbs neglects and is cleared. However, these characteristics give rise to confusion in texts. Besides, confusion can arise when adjectives are spelt as the base form of verbs, such as level, open, slow, clear, clean, equal, free, etc. In such situation, adjectives and verbs are distinguished from each other on the basis of the absence or presence of an ending after be. This is so because verbs after be require –ed (or irregular equivalent) or –ing. For example:
a. The accused are free after investigation.
b. The accused are freed after investigation.
However, not all the adjectives that are similar to verbs in spelling follow be. For example:
- Effort made them equal.
In this example, equal is an adjective because it has no directly-following noun. If it were a verb, it would need a following noun because of its licensing nature, i.e., the requirement of a direct object after it. For example:
b. He equals distribution.
5.2 Extensibility of Adjectives
Similar to the other parts of speech, adjectives can be expanded either through placing words before or after them. The words that are placed before are frequently adverbs (often of degree) e.g., quite, more, rather, too, very. The other examples of adverbs are deeply, obviously, etc. The constructions that follow adjectives are typically preposition phrases (angry at his behavior), to verbs (pleased to announce), or that clauses (certain that…).
Sometimes, adjectives expand on account of the type of meaning carried by the adjective or the adjective’s form. Gradability is one such meaning type i.e., ability to indicate different amounts. It is necessary to remember that scalable adjectives take degree adverbs before them e.g., very happy, and quite difficult. The adjectives like present, alive, essential, etc. cannot take degree adverb before them because these adjectives are non-scalable.
The degree adverbs that the base forms of adjectives take, are not allowed before comparative and superlative adjectives. For example, if the adverb very is used before the base form of adjective, the comparatives require far or much. Further, much is allowed by the superlative degree of adjective or by far is allowed before or after them. For example:
- The boys were very happy on the sports day.
- The boys were far/much happier on the day of freedom than on the sports day.
- The rabbit was much the quickest of all other animals.
- He is by far the richest in the town.
- This story is the most interesting by far.
5.3 Subtleties of Meaning
The base form and the superlative form of adjective take the adverb ‘quite’ and give meanings which are subtly different.
- It was quite a good discussion.
- It was quite the best race of the day.
In example (a), quite means fairly or rather and in (b) quite means definitely or undoubtedly.
5.3.1 Use of Adjective when it is not a typical description of the noun
It is not only that comparative adjectives show comparison through the construction comparative form + than only. They also show this through the base form + compared to. However, there is a difference between these two constructions. The base form + compared to implies the adjective is not a typical description of the noun. For example:
- The shuttle bus service is safer than driving a car.
- Work from home is more comfortable compared to commuting daily.
5.3.2 Comparative after the
Usually, the construction the comparative stays before the + noun. However, sometimes, the can precede a lone comparative adjective and follows the verb be as indicated in example ©.
a. The higher the prices, the lower the selling.
b. The lower the number at thermostat, the lesser the fuel consumption.
c. The electric supply load fluctuated all day, but its level at 5.00 PM was the higher.
6. Human Describing Adjectives
Another meaning type of adjectives comes to fore when they are used to describe human beings. For example, disinterested and unwilling are the adjectives that describe human beings. On the other hand, interesting and useful do not. Infinitive verbs after the first kind of adjectives have mostly active meaning and after the second type, have passive meaning. For example:
a. The researcher was disinterested to confirm his bias.
b. The River Nile is interesting to visit in the evening.
On the whole, this post covers important aspects of adjectives’ use in academic writing. Integration of attributive, predicative, and postpositive adjectives in sentences; the use of scaler and non-scaler adjectives; and derived and underived adjectives have been detailed. Besides, morphological structure and advanced characteristics of adjectives have been presented. The ability to employ these characteristics in writing make the academic texts impactful.
Sources Cited
1. https://guinlist.wordpress.com/category/adjectives/
2. Mohlaroyim, M. (2024). Adjectives-Definition, Forms, Types, Usage and Examples. Conference on the Role and Importance of Science in the Modern World, Volume 01, Issue 01
3. Al-Nuaimi, H. S. S. and Izreji, A.S. (2022). On English Order of Adjectives. Journal of Language Studies.Vol.5, No. 4, Pages (78-88)
4. Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., & Svartvik, J. (1985). A Comprehensive Grammar of
the English Language. New York: Longman.
5. Raskin, V. and Sergei Nirenburg, S. (1995). Lexical Semantics of Adjectives: A Microtheory of Adjectival Meaning
6. Ukpabi, B. O. (2014). Adjectives and Vagueness. A seminar on Adjectives and vagueness presented in partial fulfilment for the requirement of the course: Semantics (EST 802.2)
