Part of Speech (4): Adjective
Adjective is part of speech which includes words like big, small, beautiful, smart, etc. English and many other languages have a large number and growing class of adjectives, though in still other languages the class of adjective is tiny and closed or absent altogether. (In these languages, the meanings expressed by adjectives in English are expressed by other parts of speech)."Fast, fun, new, old, red, ugly" are all adjectives. They describe a noun.
Read these examples:
It's a fast car. It's a fun car. It's a new car.
It's an old car. It's a red car. It's an ugly car.
In English, adjectives may be defined by a umber of criteria. Not every adjective exhibits every single one of the ytpical adjectival properties, but a word that exhibits most of them must still be classed as an adjective. Here are some tests for adjective.
Distribution: An adjective can typically appear in each of the following slots to produce a good sentence: This is a(n) _____ book; This book is _____; _____ though this book is, it's not what we want. (Try this with new, interesting, expensive, beautiful).
Comparison: An adjectivecan be compared in one of the following two ways: big/bigger/biggest, beautiful/more beautiful/ most beautiful. It can akso appear in the as ..... as construction: as pretty as Rita, etc.
Degree: An adjective can be modified by a degree modifier like very, fairly, too, so, or rather. Examples: very big, fairly nice, so good, etc.
Affixation: An adjective may take the prefix un- or in- to form another adjective. Like happy/unhappy, possible/impossible, etc.
Negative properties: An adjective can't be marked for number (singular vs. plural) of for tense (past vs. non-past), nor can it take the suffix -ing which goes onto verb.
Moreover, the meaning of an adjective is typically a temporary or permanent state or condition : big, young, red, asleep, shiny, etc. Many adjetives also express subjective perceptions, rather than objective facts: interesting, beautiful, disgusting, etc. In fact, a few adjectives express very unusual types of meaning: mere, utter, etc.
To conclude, adjectives are words used to describe nouns. Adjectives give more information about a noun. Use adjectives to make your writing more interesting.
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Labels: adjective, English language, Linguistics, parts of speech
posted by Rini Ekayati :: Linguistics :: @ 12:19 PM
2 Comments:
This is a really good description of adjectives!
This is great sharing.
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