Challenges with using Adjectives(Background)

In the English language, the adjective is the part of speech that modifies or describes a noun (usually the subject) in the sentence. While adjective placement and form is somewhat standard in a variety of sentences, sometimes speakers and writers of the English language can run into trouble if the adjective requires an irregular or less common form to keep the sentence grammatically correct.

Attributive and Predicative Adjectives

• One problem that some encounter is determining where to place an adjective in a sentence. If the adjective comes before the noun, it is an "attributive" adjective -- for example, "The young child" or "The green car." Adjectives that come after the noun are called "predicative" adjectives -- for example, "The child is young" and "The car is green." While the former is fairly easy to remember in English (adjective + noun), the latter is a bit more confusing because it generally requires a verb or verb phrase before the adjective ("The man is tired") but does not always require a verb ("Surgeon General" or "times past"). Additionally, the entire meaning of a sentence or idea can change depending on whether or not the adjective is used in an attributive way or a predicative way. For example, "The poor man" indicates that we feel sorry for the man in question, whereas "The man is poor" suggests the man has little money to spend.

Qualitative and Classifying Adjectives

• Some may struggle with "qualitative" and "classifying" adjectives and how to use each correctly in a sentence. While qualitative adjectives provide information on quality ("the smart cat"), classifying adjectives put a noun or object into a specific group ( "the pregnant woman"). While this in itself is not hard to understand, what can be problematic is understanding that you can grade a qualitative adjective ("the extremely smart cat") while you cannot grade a classifying adjective. We rarely say "the highly pregnant woman" or "the really Western movie."

  Multiple Adjectives

  • Determining the order of words when more than one adjective describes a noun can be difficult. For example, if "long," "beautiful" and "silk" describe a scarf, should we say "the long, beautiful, silk scarf" or "the beautiful, silk, long scarf"? The order is something native English speakers usually learn without realizing what it is. In very general terms, an observed characteristic would come before a physical characteristic, which would precede a material. So "the beautiful, long silk scarf" sounds right to an English speaker's ears.

  Comparative Adjectives

  • Some adjectives can be "comparative" in that they suggest one thing is better, bigger, or somehow more improved upon than the other. Usually these adjectives end with -"er". (For example: the "richer" man has more money than the "rich" man, and the "fatter" cat has more girth than the "fat" cat). What is problematic for some speakers of English is learning that some adjectives require a modifier rather than "-er" ending to be comparative. Examples include the "more beautiful flower," or "the less wealthy man" or "the better choice." It would not be grammatically correct to say the "beautifuler" flower or the "betterer" choice.

  Superlative Adjectives

  • Adjectives can also be "superlative" in that they indicate a noun or object is the "best" or "greatest" (by comparison) to all other choices. For example, we might say that this flower is "the most beautiful" or this woman is "the loveliest" person in the room. And while many superlative adjectives end in "-est," there are also a wealth of irregular superlative adjectives that can create confusion because they do not: "the worst book" does not end in "-est" and requires route memorization to remember correctly. We would never say, for example, "the worstest book is on the shelf."