In linguistics,
an adjective is a "describing word", the main syntactic role
of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more
information about the object signified.
Adjectives
are one of the traditional English parts of speech, although historically
they were classed together with the nouns. Certain words that were
traditionally considered to be adjectives, including the, this, my, etc.,
are today usually classed separately, as determiners.
Types of use
A given
occurrence of an adjective can generally be classified into one of three kinds
of use:
·
Attributive adjectives are part of the noun
phrase headed by the noun they modify; for example, happy is an attributive
adjective in "happy people". In some languages, attributive
adjectives precede their nouns; in others, they follow their nouns; and in yet
others, it depends on the adjective, or on the exact relationship of the
adjective to the noun. In English, attributive adjectives usually precede their
nouns in simple phrases, but often follow their nouns when the adjective is
modified or qualified by a phrase acting as an adverb. For example: "I saw
three happy kids", and "I saw three kids happy enough to jump up and
down with glee."
·
Predicative adjectives are linked via a copula or
other linking mechanism to the noun or pronoun they modify; for example, happy is
a predicate adjective in "they are happy" and in "that made me
happy."
· Nominal adjectives act almost as nouns. One way
this can happen is if a noun is elided and an attributive adjective
is left behind. In the sentence, "I read two books to them; he preferred
the sad book, but she preferred the happy", happy is a nominal
adjective, short for "happy one" or "happy book". Another
way this can happen is in phrases like "out with the old, in with the
new", where "the old" means, "that which is old" or
"all that is old", and similarly with "the new". In such
cases, the adjective functions either as a mass noun (as in the
preceding example) or as a plural count noun, as in "The meek shall
inherit the Earth", where "the meek" means "those who are
meek" or "all who are meek".
Distribution
Adjectives
feature as a part of speech (word class) in most, but not all, languages.
In some languages, the words that serve the semantic function of
adjectives may be categorized together with some other class, such as nouns or verbs.
For example, rather than an adjective meaning "big", a language might
have a verb that means "to be big", and could then use an attributive
verb construction analogous to "big-being house" to express what
English expresses as "big house". Such an analysis is possible for
the Chinese languages, for example.
Different
languages do not always use adjectives in exactly the same situations. For
example, where English uses to be hungry (hungry being an adjective), Dutch and French
use honger hebben and avoir faim respectively (literally
"to have hunger", the words for "hunger" being nouns).
Similarly, where Hebrew uses the adjective זקוק zaqūq (roughly
"in need of"), English uses the verb "to need".
In languages
which have adjectives as a word class, they are usually an open class;
that is, it is relatively common for new adjectives to be formed via such
processes as derivation. However, Bantu languages are well known for
having only a small closed class of adjectives, and new adjectives are not
easily derived. Similarly, native Japanese adjectives (i-adjectives)
are considered a closed class (as are native verbs), although nouns (an open
class) may be used in the genitive to convey some adjectival
meanings, and there is also the separate open class of adjectival nouns (na-adjectives).
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