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An adjective is a word which modifies a noun, that is, shows or points out some distinguishing
mark or feature of the noun.
Descriptive adjectives can be divided into different categories such as colors, sizes, sound, taste,
touch, shapes, qualities, time, personality and ages.
Adjectives in the first position - before the noun - are called ATTRIBUTIVE
adjectives. Those in the second position - after the noun - are called
PREDICATIVE adjectives. Notice that predicative adjectives do not occur
immediately after the noun.
A predicate adjective modifies the subject of the sentence. In the sentence “The flowers
are blue,” the subject is “the flowers.” In this example, “blue” is what modifies the
subject, “the flowers,” and is connected to the subject by what is known as a linking verb.
Having predicate adjectives means that we can describe subjects without putting the
adjectives before him. Instead of having to say, “The good boy” followed by a verb, we
can simply say, “the boy is good.” In this sentence, we can identify that “the boy” is the
subject, “is” is the linking verb, and “good” is the predicate adjective. “Good” effectively
renames the subject of the sentence.
More examples:
There are a few adjectives which cannot occur in both predicative and attributive
position. Some only occur in attributive position (they can't function as a predicate).
Examples include "main" and "former".
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.:
For example:
Other adjectives which generally appear in the attributive position are those which are
used for emphasis, e.g.:
There are some adjectives which only 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, e.g.: I like being an alone person.
A few other adjectives can only be predicative, i.e. they can't occur in attributive position.
An example of this is "alone":