Adjective

What is adjective? 

After nouns and verbs, adjective is the largest word class in English (some books use the term part of speech instead). They describe the qualities of people, things, places, animals, etc. Let's see examples below:

A. What's your father like?

B. He's tall and handsome. 

A. Where can I learn coding for free on the internet?

B. W3School is a good website to learn coding for free.

A. Wow, that cat is jumping out of the window. Whose cat it is?

B. It's mine. It's very smart.

A. She's very beautiful and looks rich. Is she married?

B. No, she's single. 

1. Positions of adjectives

Adjectives can be used in several different positions in a sentence or clause.

1.1. Position 1

When an adjective comes before a noun, we say that it's a modifier of the noun. It's also called an "attributive adjective". 

	adjective	noun
a	young	man
	tall	trees
this	narrow	house
an	old	bike
our	national	park

More than one adjective can modify the same noun:

adjectives		noun
a	tall young	man
a	beautiful new	bike

Note: some adjectives occur only in position 1 : only, main, chief, fellow, mere, upper, utter, western, etc. Ex: a main board, chief executive officer

1.2. Position 2 (complement or predicative adjective)

In this position, it's called the "complement (subject complement)" or "predicative adjective". It always comes after the verb BE. It describes a quality of the subject. 

subject	verb phrase	complement	...
The building	is	narrow	(here)
The bus	will be	late	(this morning)
Your book	is	interesting
It	has been	rainy	today

Instead of the verb BE, we can use other linking verbs before the adjective, example: become, look, seem, stay, feel, etc.

subject	verb phrase	complement	...
Fresh milk	is becoming	expensive	(in this country)
This bed	looks	comfortable
His friends	seem	happy	today
The economy	will be	good	at the end of year

Note: some adjectives are normally not used in position 1. They are often used in position 2 such as: able, afraid, ill, glad, ready, sorry, well ("in good health"), etc,. Example: The team is ready. But not: the ready team.

1.3. Position 3

An adjective can follow the, and acts as the main word of a noun phrase. 

Example: 

1. The young should listen to the old.

2. The English have learned a lot from the Japanese.

In the examples above, the adjectives refer to a class of people, so the phrases are plural. However, it's unlike a noun which has an -s ending. Example: The youngs, the Englishes, 

Note: Only some names of nations have an adjective like English and Japanese. For nations we use a noun ending -s, example: the Americans. For more details, see the lesson [Countries].

1.4. Position 4 (object complement)

After some verbs (see the lesson Verb Pattern 12), an adjective can follow the object. It's called an "object complement".

subject	verb phrase	object	complement
I	want	my bedroom	clean
She	makes	the class	happy

1.5. Position 5 (noun + adjective)

Occasionally, an adjective follows the noun which it modifies. Example: The men involved (in the fight) were arrested.

This position is used mainly where the adjective is followed by another structure such as the prepositional phrase in bracket in the example above. 

Note: In position 5, adjectives follow some indefinite pronouns [-body, -one, thing]. Example: 1. She saw something nice in France. 2. This dog should live with someone kind. 

1.6. Position 6 (interjection)

Another rare position of adjectives is in a verbless clause.

Example: 

1. Sorry!

2. Careful!

3. Good!

2. Order of adjectives

The adjectives order before a noun is not always fixed. However, we prefer some orderings in the table below.

Adjective						Noun
	describing or expressing feeling	size	age	color	defining
a	beautiful			white	Japanese	girl
an			old	black		cat
those	funny	little				puppies
a		tall			technical	staff

Adjectives can have more than two in a series, including more than one adjective at the same type.

Example:

a fine old Japanese wine [feeling + age + defining]

an old Chinese mechanical worker [age + difining + defining]

a smart black Japanese dog [feeing + color + deifing]

3. Comparative and superlative adjectives

Most adjectives also have comparative forms using -er or more, or superlative forms using -est or most. Example:

	comparative	superlative
good	better	best
large	larger	largest
lucky	luckier	luckiest
big	bigger	biggest
fortunate	more fortunate	most fortunate
beautiful	more beautiful	most beautiful
dangerous	more dangerous	most dangerous

You can find out more details on how to form camparative and superlative in seperate lesson.

Note: Normally, some adjectives do not have comparative and superlative forms. Example: absent, eqaul, left, fight, opposite, single, married

4. Words which modifies adjectives

Very and other adverbs of degree can modify most adjectives.

modifier	adjective
very	good
too	hot
incredibly	stupid
really	hungry
quite	large
more	interesting

The adverb modifier + an adjective can modify the noun or act as complement.

Example: Facebook was created by a very famous person. = The creator of Facebook is very famous.

Note: The only adverb of degree which follows its' adjective is enough, example: big enough, large enough, tall enough

5. Form of adjectives

Most adjectives do not have special endings. Usually, they can be paired with adjectives of opposiste meaning.

Example:

good	bad
beautiful	ugly
little	big
small	large
old*	young
old*	new
hard*	easy
hard*	soft
rich	poor

Some adjectives, like old and hard, can be paired with more than one opposite, as we see in the table above. However, we can recognise many adjectives by their engdings. Let's see below:

-al	actual, general, final, mental, physical, special
-an	American, Christian, German, Indian, Russian, human
-ar	familiar, regular, particular, popular, similar
-ble	fashionable, possible, impossible, probable, comfortable
-ed	confused, exited, limited, unlimited, related
-ent	ancient, excellent, frequent, urgent
-ful	beautiful, careful, grateful, skillful
-ic	basic, electric, public, scientific
-ing	amazing, surprising, disappointing, interesting
-ive	active, attractive, native, sensitive, positive
-less	careless, homeless, harmless, senseless
-ous	conscious, famous, serious, various
-y	angry, dirty, funny, healthy, hungry, icy

Other adjective endings:

childlike, solid, wooden, ordinary, daily, foolish, Scottish, etc. 

We hope this article can help you understand about adjectives. If you have any question please leave a comment below.