_Adjectives and adverbs
1 Adjectives 112
2 Adverbs 122
1 Adjectives
1.1 Distinctive properties of prototypical adjectives
Adjectives typically denote properties of objects, persons, places, etc.:
properties relating to age (old, young), size (big, small), shape (round,flat), weight
(heavy, light), colour (black, blue), merit or quality (good, bad), and so on. Syntac
tically, prototypical adjectives in English have the following three properties.
(a) Function
They have attributive and predicative uses. Attributive adjectives function as inter
nal pre-head modifier to a following noun; predicative adjectives function mainly
as predicative complement in clause structure:
[I] ATTRIBUTIVE USE
ii PREDICATIVE USE(b) Grade
an old car
The car is old.black hair
Her hair is black.good news
The news is good.They either inflect for grade, showing a contrast between plain, comparative and
superlative forms, or else form comparative and superlative adjective phrases
(AdjPs) marked by more and most:
[2] PLAIN
She is tall.
II This is useful(c) Modification
COMPARATIVE
She is taller than you.
Th is is more useful than that.SUPERLATIVE
She is the tallest of them all.
This is the most useful one.They can be modified, usually by adverbs, as in [3] (the adverbs are double
underlined):
[3] too old remarkably tall extremely useful to us112