Adjectives and noun modifiers in English – article

Introduction

The book critic R. Z Sheppard once remarked that adjectives “are the potbelly of poetry”. Many English language teachers would not take such a disparaging view. Adjectives are often quite fun to teach and the rules surrounding them are, usually, quite straightforward. We start by looking at adjectives in relation to the wider phrasal structures they occur in, examining issues of position, complementation, and ordering.

When we want to give more information than can be provided by using a noun alone, we can add an adjective to identify a person or thing, or describe them in more detail, e.g.

Note that sometimes nouns can be placed before other nouns as a way of identifying a particular type of person or thing, e.g.

Nouns used in this way are usually referred to as noun modifiers. Though they are functioning in a similar way to some adjectives, we classify them as nouns. Examples like this are often referred to as compound nouns, with the first noun identifying a particular type in relation to the group of people or things described by the second noun.

Position of adjectives

Most adjectives can appear before a noun as part of a noun phrase, placed after determiners or numbers if there are any, and immediately before the noun, e.g.

Adjectives placed before a noun in this way are generally referred to as occurring in the attributive position.

Most adjectives can also occur as complements of the verb be and other link verbs such as become, feel or seem, e.g.

Adjectives placed after the verb in this way are generally referred to as occurring in the predicative position.

When the information contained in an adjective is not the main focus of a statement, then the adjective is usually placed before the noun in the attributive position.

However, when the main focus of a statement is to give the information contained in an adjective, the adjective is usually placed after the verb in the predicative position, compare:

Though most adjectives can be used in both the attributive and predicative positions, there are a number of adjectives that can occur in one particular position only, as described below.

Position: attributive only

There are some adjectives which can only be used before a noun, in the attributive position. For instance, we talk about the main problem but cannot say, the problem was main.

Adjectives which occur only in the attributive position are generally those which identify something as being of a particular type. For instance, we can talk about a financial decision where financial distinguishes this from other types of decision, e.g. medical, political. This group of adjectives are often referred to as classifying adjectives, and rarely occur in the predicative position unless we specifically want to emphasise a contrast, e.g.

Other adjectives which generally appear in the attributive position are those which are used for emphasis, e.g.

Position: predicative only

There are some adjectives which usually occur in the predicative position, as complements of be or other link verbs. For instance, you can say He felt glad  but wouldn’t normally talk about a glad person.

Adjectives which usually occur in the predicative position include those which describe feelings, such as afraid, content, glad, ready, sure, sorry and upset, e.g.

They also include a group of adjectives with prefix a-, such as asleep, alive, alone, ashamed, awake,     aware, e.g.

I like being alone. but not, * I like being an alone person.

Position: immediately after noun

Some adjectives that describe size or age can occur immediately after a noun that indicates a unit of measurement, e.g.

There is a small group of adjectives, sometimes referred to as post nominal adjectives, which can only occur immediately after a noun. Examples are:

Many other adjectives can be used immediately after a noun when they form part of a (reduced) relative clause, e.g.

Position and meaning

There are some adjectives which can occur either before or after a noun, but the position they occur in has an effect on their meaning, e.g.

• the concerned parents (= the parents who are worried)
• the parents concerned (= the parents who are involved/mentioned)
• the present situation (= the situation which exists now)
• the people present (= the people who are here/there).
• a responsible person (= a person who is sensible/reliable)
• the person responsible (= the person who is to blame or has responsibility for something)

Adjective complementation

When adjectives occur in the predicative position, after be or other link verbs, they are sometimes followed by a prepositional phrase or verbal complement. Some typical examples are summarised in the table below:

Order of adjectives

Adjectives describing the main characteristics of a person or thing are often grouped together before the noun they describe, e.g.

Two or three descriptive adjectives are often used together in this way, though note that placing more than three adjectives before a noun would start to sound unnatural, e.g.

Sounds fine, but a structure like:

... though grammatical, would not normally occur in everyday speech or writing. Descriptive adjectives used in this way belong to seven main types. This table summarises the types and the usual order in which they appear if more than one adjective is placed before a noun.

Similarly, an age adjective would normally be placed before an origin adjective, e.g.

An opinion adjective would occur before a shape or colour adjective, and a shape or colour adjective would occur before a material adjective, e.g.

If two colour adjectives are used, then and is placed between them, e.g.

If three colour adjectives occur, a comma is placed after the first and the last two are linked with and, e.g.

As a general rule, the adjective which is closest to the noun is the most closely linked to the meaning of the noun, describing a feature which is the most permanent about it, compared to adjectives which express a variable characteristic, such as an opinion. For instance, if we consider:

... the ‘leather-ness’ of the bag is a more essential characteristic than cost or appearance.

If more than one adjective occurs which expresses an opinion or describes a general quality, then the adjective with a more general meaning, e.g. nice, bad usually precedes the one with a more specific meaning, e.g. comfortable, clean, for example:

If two adjectives with similar meanings are used, the shorter one often comes first, e.g.

The conjunction but is sometimes placed between two adjectives which describe contrasting qualities, e.g.

The order of adjectives in predicative position, i.e. after the verb be or link verbs such as seem or feel, is less fixed than the order before a noun. The conjunction and is generally used to link adjectives in this position, occurring before the last adjective used, e.g.

Adjectives expressing opinion are often placed last, e.g.

If we want to imply a contrast between adjectives, the conjunction but is sometimes used, e.g.