An adjective is a part of speech that describes and modifies a noun, to make a writing or conversation more specific, relevant, and coherent. The word “adjective”
has been derived from the Latin word adjectīvum, which means “additional.”
Adjectives are words used to modify nouns or pronouns. To modify is to specify the exact meaning of another word. As a modifier, the adjective does not change the basic meaning of the word it modifies: ‘a black dog’ is still a dog. The modifier,
‘black’, merely tells us something more specific about the word it modifies.
Adjectives modify a noun or pronoun by describing, limiting or making its meaning more nearly exact. Adjectives may be more than one word.
An adjective modifies, quantifies, and even transforms the things, ideas, places, and even incidents referred to in the sentence, making them unique and individual. It generally appears before a noun or a pronoun, modifying it to shed more light on its specific characteristics. For instance, “This isn’t a romance. You’re not a damsel in distress and I’m not the handsome prince come to save you” (Captive in the Dark,
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by C.J Roberts). Here, the adjective “handsome” has modified the noun “prince,”
making it clear which prince the writer is referring to.
Adjectives are usually defined by their distribution, that is, where they can occur in word strings. They are characteristically found in two places: first, in an attributive position within a noun phrase and a predicative position (Quirlc and Greenbaum, 2008).
From the point of view of Quirk et al (1980), four features are generally considered to be characteristic of adjectives:
1. They can freely occur in attributive position, that is, they can pre-modify a noun as “the lazy teacher”, “the little boy”.
2. They can occur in a predicative position. Which means they can function as an object or subject complement, e.g. ‘reasonable’ in ‘the man seemed reasonable’.
3. They can be pre-modified by the intensifier ‘very’. e.g. “the men are very enthusiastic”
4. They can take comparative and superlative forms with inflection or by the addition of the pre- modifiers ‘more’ or ‘most’
For example:
“They are happier now”.
“They are the happiest couple I know.”
“She is more beautiful than Jane”.
“They are the most colorful flowers I have ever seen.”
According to Geoffrey Finch (2000), adjectives are words which specify the attributes of nouns. Typically, they give information about the size, color, shape and appearance of entities.
According to Huong and Loan (2015) in the book “Giai thich ngu phap”, in English language, if there are many adjectives appear in a sentence, they can be followed these suggesting orders:
Adjectives indicating feelings (nice, beautiful, etc.) usually precede descriptive adjectives (new, large, round, wooden, etc.)
For example:
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An interesting young man
Adjectives that indicate the size and length (big, tall, long, etc.) usually precede the adjectives of shape and width (round, fat, wide, etc.)
For example:
A tall thin girl
A long narrow street
When there are 2 or more adjectives of color we use "and"
For example:
A black and white dress A red, white and green flag
When two or more descriptive adjectives are used in a sentence, their order is arranged as follows:
1) Number 2) Quality 3) Size 4) Age 5) Color
6) Origin or country 7) Material
8) Noun For example:
A small black plastic bag An Old Russian song
As we know, there are many classifications of English adjectives. However, the writer based on Dixon’s View (1991) classifies English adjectives more categorically. In terms of their usage classification, English adjectives are divided into ten types as follows: dimension, physical property, speed, age, color, value, difficulty, qualification, human propensity, and similarity.
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Regarding semantic functions of English adjectives, according to Quirk et al (1973), stative adjectives denote “a state or condition, which may generally be consider permanent” such as big, red, tall, etc. In contrast, dynamic adjectives denote attributes which are, to some extent at least, “under the control of the one who possesses them”. For instance, brave denotes an attribute which may not always be in evidence (as unlike red), but which may be called upon as it is required. For this reason, it is appropriate to use it in an imperative. According to L. G. Alexander (1988) adjectives can be also divided into gradable and non- gradable. Gradable adjectives mean “a large class of words which can be graded, or in other words, they can be modified by intensifiers and include comparison such as very young, young, younger, the youngest. An adjective is gradable when we can imagine degrees in the quality referred to and so can use it with words like very, too and enough or when we can form a comparative and superlative from it as big, bigger, biggest, etc. Non- gradable adjectives are a small class that cannot be graded or in other words, principally technical adjectives and adjectives denoting provenance such as atomic, hydrochloric, British and an adjective is non- gradable when we cannot modify it, it means that we cannot use it with very, too and We cannot make a comparative or superlative from it such as daily, dead, medical, unique, etc.
2.2.3.2 Adjective phrases in English
2.2.3.2.1. Definition of the phrase in English
A phrase is a group (or pairing) of words in English. A phrase can be short or long, but it does not include the subject-verb pairing necessary to make a clause.
According to John Eastwood in his book “Oxford guide to English grammar”, there are some kinds of phrases in English, which include:
Prepositional phrases: after the meal, on time, underneath the sagging yellow couch, from eating too much, after lunch, on the aircraft, etc.
Noun phrases: the nice neighbor, a great English teacher, a cat that refused to meow, the shoplifted pair of jeans, a good flight, his crew, etc.
Verb phrases: were waiting for the movie, had cleaned, should have been writing, must wash, etc.
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Adjective phrases: very delicious, very good, smarter than me, unbelievably difficult, very late, etc.
Adverb phrase: quickly, almost certainly, etc.
None of these examples contains a subject doing an action (subject-verb).
Therefore, each example is merely a group of words called a phrase. A phrase will always be more than one word.
2.2.3.2.2. Definition of Adjective phrases in English
Base on the website “yourdictionary.com”, “adjective phrases” act just like adjectives. They modify, describe, or give more information about a noun or pronoun. For example: “The very small kitten jumped at the big dog.” Other adjectival phrases modify the predicate of the sentence, for instance: “Extra buttons came with the coat.” Adjective phrases can also modify objects and will follow the word they are modifying, for example: “My new kitten makes me very happy.”
And Biber, D. et al (1999) mentioned that adjective phrases contain an adjective as head, optionally accompanied by modifiers in the form of single words, phrases, and clauses. The adjective head is in bold in the following example: “so luck, good enough”.
And the following definition of adjective phrases by Sargeant, H (2007) Phrases can be used like single adjectives to describe nouns and pronouns. Phrases that are used in this way are called adjective phrases. Most adjective phrases come after the word they describe. Look at these examples. The adjective phrases are in italic and the nouns they describe are in bold “Who is the girl with long hair?” Some adjective phrases come before the word they describe. The words in these phrases are often joined with hyphens: a long-legged bird, an eight-year-old child, etc.
In his book “Phrases, Clauses and Sentences”, George Davison (2002) mentioned that an adjective phrase is any phrase that has an adjective as its head and that can occupy the same position as a single adjective in a noun phrase or fill the same slot as a single adjective in a sentence. For example "Her behavior was absolutely unbelievable"; “We considered her behavior completely unacceptable."
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Geoffrey Leech (2006) stated in his book “A Glossary of English Grammar” An adjective phrase is a phrase in which an adjective is the head or main word. The simplest kind of adjective phrase is one which consists simply of an adjective, as in
"The meeting was noisy". An adjective phrase can be made more complex by adding modifiers (especially degree adverbs) before the adjective: The meeting was very/too noisy. Also, the adjective can be followed by other words which modify or complement the meaning of the adjective: too poor to feed themselves; too early for breakfast; useful enough; funnier than the last show; and so on. An adjective phrase can contain a comparative clause, as in "The weather this winter has been colder than I can remember".
According to Geoffrey Finch (2000), an adjective phrase is a phrase with an adjective as head, as in “very happy” There are simple adjectives such as good, bad, big, fat, young, old, simple, etc. and derived adjectives which are formed through adding suffixes to nouns and verbs, such as -able adorable, -fill careful, -ic economic, -ive talkative, -ous dangerous, etc.
2.2.3.2.3. Structure of adjective phrases in English
According to Downing, A., and Locke (1992) in the book “English Grammar: A University Course”, the adjective phrase is composed potentially of three structural elements: modifier, head, and complement
Table 1: Full Adjective Phrases Structures
Modifier Head Complement
extremely cold for this time of the year
very happy that you won the match
According to Kies (2009), the adjective phrase in English has four functional constituents:
Pre-modification, those modifying, describing, or qualifying constituents which precede the head.
The head, which is an adjective or participle serving as the focus of the phrase;
Post-modification, that modifying constituent which follows the head;
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Complementation, (the major subcategory of post-modification here) that constituent which follows any post-modification and completes the specification of a meaning implied by the head.
Figure 1: Functional constituents of adjective phrases Table 2: Examples of the Adjective Phrases
Some Examples of the Adjective Phrase in English FUNCTION Pre-modifier Head Post-modifier
(a) happy
E (b) excited indeed
X (c) partly cloudy
A (d) young in spirit
M (e) very energetic for his age P (f) so extremely sweet
L (g) too good to be true
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E (h) hot enough for me
S (i) quite worried about the results of the test (j) unusually sunny for this time of year
FORM
Adverb
Adverb Adjective Prepositional Phrase Adverb Phrase Infinitive Clause 2.2.3.2.4. Functions/Roles of adjective phrases in English
According to Geoffrey Leech (2006), in terms of their function, adjective phrases generally act as complements: either as subject complement, as in “The meeting was too long”, or as object complement, as in “I found the meeting too long”.
George Davison (2002) mentioned that adjective phrases have two main functions:
Adjective phrases modify nouns:
For example:
A very exciting proposal A surprisingly easy exam A good enough result
Adjective phrases function as subject-complements or object-complement For example:
Her proposal was very exciting (subject-complements) The results were good enough (subject-complements) You've made us very proud (object-complement)
That was awfully silly of you, wasn't it? (Object-complement) Let's consider the subject pretty well closed (object-complement)
Pat the fruit completely dry with some kitchen paper (object-complement) According to Biber, D (1999), adjective phrases may have the following syntactic roles.
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Pre-modifier of noun, it precedes noun and modifies for a noun. Adjective phrases before a noun are called attributive phrases
For example:
He is a nice man
Do you see the mall green boat?
Sarah is my youngest sister
I know some very good restaurants Where are the really big bowls?
Post-modifier of noun, it occurs after nouns to modify for nouns in case nouns are something, someone, somebody, somewhere, anything, anyone, anybody, anywhere, everything, everybody, everyone, everywhere, nowhere, nothing, nobody and no one.
For example:
There’s nowhere nice to go for a walk here
I have nothing good to say about it as a holiday resort
There’s something terribly sad about saying goodbye, isn’t there?
Let’s go somewhere different
Subject predicative (Subject complement), It complements for a subject For example:
Her hair was dyed blonde
Her behavior was absolutely unbelievable
Object predicative (Object complement), It complements for an object For example:
Sitting in traffic drives me crazy
The fire has made the room much warmer Money doesn’t always make us happy
We considered her behavior completely unacceptable
Verb predicative (Verb complement), It complements for a verb. It completes the meaning of verbs that describe what the subject is, does or experiences. These verbs include be, seem, become, feel, smell, taste
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(linking verbs). When adjective phrases complement verbs, this is called their predicative function.
For example:
I felt sad
This soup smells really wonderful She thought the room was very strange That coffee tastes too strong