Adjectives

Adjectives have two uses:

• to modify a noun
  a big elephant
• to form the subject complement in a clause
  That elephant is big.

Adjectives can be divided into two categories:

• qualitative
• classifying

Qualitative adjectives

Qualitative adjectives give information about the qualities of the noun they modify. Examples are big, hungry, and expensive. Adjectives of this type can be graded. By putting certain words in front of them and grading them we can comment on how much of the quality the noun has. For example:

an intelligent student
a highly intelligent student
a fairly intelligent student

The use of highly and fairly makes an extremely big difference to the meaning.

Qualitative adjectives can also be comparative or superlative:

Classifying adjectives place the noun into a class or category such as pregnant, annual, and western.

Classifying adjectives cannot be graded. For example it would be odd to describe a school prize-giving as a highly annual event. Even so, sometimes people break this 'rule' to achieve a special effect, for example: She was looking very pregnant. The word people make most fuss about is unique. Since this adjective means 'the only one of its kind', they object that it is impossible to have something that is very unique. On the other hand, there is nothing wrong with saying that something is almost unique.

Other examples of classifying adjectives are:

©John Seely 2008