Basically adjective is a word used to modify a noun or pronoun by describing, identifying, or quantifying words. They usually tell us more about people and things. For example, "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog". The words highlighted are adjective to describe the noun "dog" and "fox". Without the adjectives the sentence will be "The fox jumps over the dog" which sound boring and not descriptive. An adjective usually precedes the noun or the pronoun which it modifies. An example to show how adjectives are used to identify items, "These cakes that she baked are awesome". Last but not least, to quantify a word, we use numbers such as one, three, eight, ten and so on to quantify things/items, for example, "She has ten children!". These are the fundamentals of adjectives.
Going deeper into this grammar law, we have possessive, demonstrative, interrogative and indefinite adjectives where a given occurrence of an adjective can be classified into one of the four kinds stated above.
Firstly, in the possessive adjectives group, we have "my, your, his, her, its, our, their" which are similar to a possessive pronoun (pronoun acting as a marker of possession and who owns the object) to modify a noun or a noun phrase. In this examples, "I can't finish my dinner because I have no appetite" it is used as an adjective and changes a noun or noun phrase. The possessive adjective "my" changes "dinner" and the noun phrase "my dinner" functions as an object. Another example is, "After the war, he returned to his homeland" where "her" modifies the noun "homeland" and the noun phrase "her homeland" is the object of the preposition. Possessive adjectives can be used when there is a combination of a noun and a noun phrase(to represent the object) in a sentence.
Secondly, is the demonstrative adjectives which includes adjectives such as, "this, these, that, those and what". For instance, "This house needs to be repainted", "That cookie does not belong to you!". In both sentences, the adjective demonstrate objects that are nearby either in space or time
Interrogative adjectives includes adjectives like "which" or "what", when used, modifies a noun or a noun phrase rather than standing on its own. For illustrations purposes, "Which cookie do you prefer?" and "What do you have to offer?"
Lastly is the indefinite adjectives which encompass words such as "many, any, a few, and all". They are used to explain nouns like people, animals, objects and the like. For example, "Mrs Chan regularly reminds us to complete all assignments before the next class begins.
Above are the subunits of adjectives and now we'll go into degrees of adjectives where I think most of us will be familiar with. The degree of comparison are divided into three segments; the positive, the comparative and the superlative. We normally use the comparative and superlative to explain degrees where for the comparative(between two items), we add the suffix -er to the positive adjective and for the superlative(among all the items), we add the suffix -est. We sometimes ned to change it to -ier and -iest when a two-syllable adjective ends with a "y"(happier and happiest) and for the others that do not end with a "y" or when an adjective has more than one syllable, we add the word more before the base adjective rather than a suffix.
For better understanding, in the positive, comparative and superlative arrangement,
1. Jane is nice.
2. Mary is nicer than Jane.
3. Steve is the nicest of them all.
for the two-syllable adjective that ends with a "y",
1. This is a juicy orange.
2. The Australian orange is juicier.
3. The Valencia orange is the juiciest orange on Earth and therefore, it is used for juice extraction .
for more than 2 syllable adjective,
1. Cindy is beautiful.
2. Fiona is more beautiful.
3. Miss Japan was the most beautiful among all.
With that, I end my blog for today. Happy reading and understanding adjectives! I know it sounds simple but sometimes we tend to complicate things without knowing and hence, getting wrong answers for Mrs. Chan's exercise! Got to boost up our text editing points up up up before the final exam. Thank you and see you all in class :)
Reference :
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/GRAMMAR/adjectives.htmhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjectives
http://www.uottawa.ca/academic/arts/writcent/hypergrammar/adjectve.html
The Good Grammar Book by Swan. M. and Walter. C. page 199.
6 comments:
wow. It looks like you did a deep research about adjective. You also listed the resources from which your information is taken.In fact, there are something so familiar such as "what" and "which", but I don't know that they serve as adjectives. However, after listing usages and functions of adjectives, you don't mention how you can decrease the amount of mistake that relates to adjectives. In addition, It is necessary to include a few of exercises together with your profolio.
oh yes yes i did not insert the part to reduce the amounts of mistakes that relates to adjectives! thanks for pointing out kim :)
Hi Calvin~ Everything starts with basic, even though it is simple, it’s easy to understand and informative! However, I suggest that maybe you can include the order of adjectives in your explanation as I think this part is the most common mistake that made by students. Just to add on a little, we usually use adjectives in this order: opinion, size, most other qualities, age, colour, origin, material, type, purpose. For example, a long boring train journey. (size, quality, type) I hope this helps. =)
Anyway I never know that ‘this’, ‘that’, ‘which’, ‘what’ etc. are classified in adjectives, you give a clearer view for me about adjectives, thanks a lot~^^ It’s a good job done!
Hi Calvin. I agree with Kim that you really did a deep research in the usage of adjectives. I never knew that pronouns can be adjectives. However, I still think that you ought to use simplified English so that readers who have trouble understanding complicated sentence structures wouldn't have a problem. ;-). All in all, I would say that you've provided good information on the usage of adjectives.
hi, calvin. your article is really reader-friendly! using colors to highlight is very considerate. to the article itself, i think you also did very well and it really helpful.
Wonderful job. You know I wrote about the same topic as you. But after reading yours, I feel that it is just too much better! You have got such a wide view. And you also explain all the categories clearly with the examples and highlight. Well done. I not only learned a lot about adj., but also learned much about the ways to explain. Thank you for sharing~~
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