Adjectives: Characteristics

Adjective Characteristics and Roles

Adjectives or adjective phrases modify, or provide information about, a noun. They do this either directly as a premodifier (or occasionally postmodifier) of a noun phrase, or less directly as a predicative.

Adjectives are characterized by these roles and by whether they are gradable or non-gradable, and whether they can be inflected to show degrees of comparison (e.g. small, smaller, smallest).

Syntactic Roles of Adjectives

1. Adjectives function as the head of an adjective phrase: very powerful, easier to manage, colder than snow or ice;
2. Adjectives can function in an attributive position (as the premodifier of a noun): wide variety, dramatic decline;
3. Adjectives can function in a predicative position (as a subject or object complement): "Sometimes they are successful." "This keeps them healthy and productive." (Masehela 2017) ;
4. Adjectives can take comparative and superlative forms: "Why are our top eyelashes longer than our bottom eyelashes?" (Moro and Stromberga 2020). "Solar cells are the cheapest way to make electricity" (Blakers 2019).

Other Characteristics of Adjectives

1. Many short common adjectives can be inflected to show degrees of comparison: "Why are our top eyelashes longer than our bottom eyelashes?" "Solar cells are the cheapest way to make electricity". Those which don't take inflection use more and most, or less and least: "For example, is Japanese more difficult than English?" (Sorace 2023).;
2. Adjectives function as descriptors: "First, they are all much wider than they are thick" (Kuhn 2020). or classifiers: "These technical, financial and even mechanical issues are easy to identify" (Czerniewicz 2015).;
3. Many adjectives (not all) are gradable - they can be modified by an adverb and take comparative and superlative forms: very small, surprisingly active, less generous.

Central and Peripheral Adjectives

Central Adjectives are those which occupy all of the syntactic roles, which have a descriptive function (they are descriptors rather than descriptors) and are gradable. If an adjective does not satisfy all these conditions it is a peripheral adjective.

Examples:

• new : Central adjective;
• aware : Peripheral adjective; not usable as an attributive adjective, doesn't take inflection;
• important : Peripheral adjective; doesn't take inflection;
• high : Central adjective;
• different : Peripheral adjective; doesn't take inflection, not a descriptor;
• infinite : Peripheral adjective; doesn't take inflection, not a descriptor, not gradable.

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