Adjectives: definition

Adjectives give a quality to an entity, typically in the form of a

noun

They form an open class: you can make up as many as you like

Adapted from Brasart, C. 2015. "L'Essentiel de la grammaire anglaise". Paris : Armand

Colin. More details in this book 0
Adjectives: definition

Adjectives mean ‘something added’

They are used to add information to an already complex bundle

of features

e.g. a man vs. a charming man

When used on its own, an adjective reduces a complex bundle of

features to a single property

compare in French: une personne sans-abri vs. un sans-abri

1
 Adjectives: definition

The relationship between an adjective and a noun is multiple:

• an old tree (a tree which is old) vs. an old friend (not

necessarily a friend who is old)

• my beautiful car (my car is beautiful) ≠ my own car (*my car is

own)

2
 Adjectives: definition

A lot of the most common adjectives used in English are of

Germanic origin.

Most adjectives are created with suffixes, e.g. -able, -less, -some,
-ful, etc.

Adjectives are not put in the plural in English. Likewise, a noun

used as an adjective cannot be used in the plural form

3
Adjectives: definition

Adjectives can have the following functions:

• attributive (épithète) iced coffee

• predicative (attribut) the coffee is iced
• appositional (appositif) i’ll have coffee, iced

It is generally said that attributive adjectives are synthetic, since

adjective and noun are linked
Predicative adjectives are analytic: two different items are linked
together through a linking verb

4
Attributive adjectives

Before the noun they qualify, however complex an adjective

phrase might be
e.g. an amazingly nice person

Any complements of the attributive adjective are placed after

the noun
e.g. a hard vehicle to clean

5
Attributive adjectives

Attributive adjectives are ordered according to two continua:

• the more inherent/objective the quality, the closer the

adjective is to the noun

• TAFCOM or OPSHACOM

6
Attributive adjectives

• the more inherent/objective the quality, the closer the

adjective is to the noun

Subjective features come before objective features

• a lazy young cat: a young cat which happens to be lazy

• an young lazy cat: a lazy cat which happens to be young

7
8
 Attributive adjectives

TAFCOM: taille - âge - forme - couleur - origine - matière

A big old round yellow wooden spoon

OPSHACOM: Opinion - Shape - Age - Color - Origin - Material

9
Predicative adjectives

Predicative adjectives are used to attribute a feature to

something

They can be:

• subject complement (attribut du sujet): the oven is hot
• object complement (attribut de l’objet): I find it hot

Predicative adjectives are used after linking verbs:

• state verbs, e.g. be, stay, prove, remain, stay
• transient verbs, e.g. become, fall, turn into, grow, get…
• perception verbs, e.g. look, feel, sound, smell, taste…

10
Appositive adjectives

While attributive adjectives can be used to specify a subcategory

of a referent, appositions only mention a feature of the noun
phrase

When omitted from a clause/sentence, the remaining

constituents still form a grammatical whole:

The students, tired and hungry, used their mobile phones to

order pizza during the lecture.

a mobile phone is a type of phone. A tired and hungry student is

not a type of student.
11
 Appositive adjectives

Appositions are relatively mobile:

The students, tired and hungry, used their phones to order pizza
during the lecture.

Tired and hungry, the students used their phones to order pizza
during the lecture.

12
 Appositive adjectives

Careful! Appositions usually only work with more than one

adjective in English.

Les étudiants, fatigués, ont du mal à comprendre

*The students, tired, have a hard time understanding

13
 Adjectives

Most adjectives in English can be used attributively or

predicatively.

Other adjectives are restricted to either one function or the

other :
• the baby is asleep (predicative)
• *the asleep baby (attributive)

• my former roommate (attributive)

• *my roommate is former (predicative)

14
 Adjectives

Attributive but not predicative : examples

• former/latter, present/past/future, late (=dead), major, sole,

utter, daily (weekly/monthly/yearly), chief, main, principal,
sheer

Predicative but not attributive

• asleep, alive, ill, afloat, afraid, alone

15
 Nominalisation
• Adjectives can be used as nouns under certain conditions

• Adjectives do not have a plural form: this lack of plural

morphology can lead to ambiguity

• Most of the time, an adjective is used as a noun to refer to a

group of people identifiable by one shared feature

e.g. the English, the Chinese, the unemployed, the deaf, the
young…

Nominalised adjectives are virtually always used with the

16
 Nominalisation

The adjective / adjective-used-as-noun / de-adjectival noun

boundary is fuzzy: there are various degrees of nominalisation

It’s also changing very fast!

What are the adjectives you use most frequently in French?

17
 Adjectives and degree

An adjective attributes a quality to something

Most qualities can be thought of in terms of degree

Some qualities, technically, should only be absolute, e.g. dead

18
Adjectives and degree

19
Adjectives and degree

There are two types of relative degree:

• intensity
• comparison

20
Degree: intensity

There are two types of relative degree:

That’s very important news = high intensity

That’s too sad to be true = excessive intensity

Intensity depends on how well a quality applies to a referent

You’re so French! = why can we say that? Either you’re French,

either you’re not

Here, you is linked with a metaphorical set of qualities that can

be graded: to be adept at cooking, prone to complaining, etc.

21
Degree: comparison

Comparison takes into account how well a quality applies to one

referent relative to how well it applies to another referent

They both were much more enthusiastic than the rest of the
group

There are two types of comparison:

• comparative
• superlative

22
 Degree: comparison

• The comparative puts together two instances of the same

property, so as to situate one relative to the other

• The superlative puts together one instance of a property with

all other instances of a property, so as to distinguish the
former from the latter

23
 Degree: comparison

• You can compare how one quality applies to two entities

my grandmother is as athletic as yours

Quality = athleticiness

• You can also compare how two qualities apply to one thing
my grandmother is as athletic as she is funny
entity = grandmother
qualities = athleticiness, funniness

24
Degree: comparison

If two things share the same feature, one of them can have:

• more of it than the other

• less of it than the other
• as much of it than the other

25
 Forming the comparative

Monosyllabic adjectives

Adjectives ending in <y>; <le>, <er>, <ow>

• Add <er> for the comparative, the + <est> for the superlative

happier, the happiest; narrower / the narrowest

26
Forming the comparative

Other adjectives:

More for the comparative, the most for the superlative

more interesting, the most interesting

27
Forming the comparative

Irregular adjectives:

good / well: better / best

bad, badly, ill: worse, worst

far: farther / further, farthest

old: older / elder, oldest / eldest

28
 Forming the comparative

• The second element of a comparative is always introduced by

than

• used whenever two things are compared

I’d rather eat pizza than soup

*British English is different than American English

29
 Forming the comparative

• with the superlative, the group at stake can be introduced by:

• of

Al Pacino is one of the best actors of all time

• in (when introducing a physical or metaphorical place)

it was the most dangerous stunt in the history of cinema

30
 Forming the comparative

The comparative of inferiority is formed with less / the least

Equality is formed with as… as

Careful ! Mind the difference in syntax:

Wuthering Heights is a better book than Pride and Prejudice

Wuthering Heights is as good a book as Pride and Prejudice

With attributive adjectives, the determiner and noun stick

together in the case of equality comparatives; this syntactic
pattern is incompatible with plural and non-count nouns

31
Adjectives and degree
• Another type of comparative is the progressive comparative

used when the intensity of a quality changes constantly

they’re getting better and better

our group is becoming less and less visible

• A parallel comparative is used to establish a correlation

between the progression of two qualities:

the more the merrier (positive correlation: when the intensity of

quality 1 goes up, the intensity of quality 2 goes up as well)
32
Adjective modifiers

• An adjective can be determined by another element

• Adjective modifiers are usually placed before the adjective

e.g. an ice-cold drink

The phrase Bowie

Mugshot is used to
create a
subcategory of
coolness

33
Adjective modifiers

• These structures are extremely frequent. They include:

modifier + verb + <ing> + noun

e.g. a hair-rising experience

modifier + noun + <ed> + noun

e.g. a green-eyed girl, a heart-shaped ring, a quick-witted boy, a

well-traveled path, a self-made woman

34