The complete picture is more complex than this overview may suggest.
Modifiers also may supply information to other modifiers and to sentences or
clauses, but their function nevertheless remains adjectival or adverbial.
Adjectival Modifiers
Adjectival modifiers supply information, usually sensory, to noun phrases. The
most common type of adjectival modifier is thesimple adjective.Consider
these sentences:
- Macarena bought areddress.
- Thenewbook made her career.
- Hiswoodenspeech put the crowd to sleep.
Each of these simple adjectives supplies information to its associated noun:
The dress wasred;the book wasnew;the speech waswooden.
As indicated earlier, many words can function as modifiers, and when they
do they commonly function as adjectivals. Consider sentence 45:
- Macarena bought an evening gown.
Eveningis a noun, but in sentence 45 it functions as an adjectival.Predicate Adjectives. Simple adjectives come before the nouns they
modify. However, there are two special adjectives that do not. The first kind is one
that we’ve already seen in sentence 2:The tree was tall.The wordtallis an adjec-
tive, and it supplies information totree,but it follows the linking verbwas.Because
this construction has a special relation with the linking verb and is an adjective, we
give it a specific name:predicate adjective.Predicate adjectives can only follow
linking verbs.
Now we’re in a better position to understand the difference betweenballin
Fritz hit the ballandtallinThe tree was tall.Both complete the predicate, but
ballis a noun functioning as an object, whereastallis a predicate adjective
functioning as a complement. Sentences 46 through 48 illustrate additional
predicate adjectives:
- Fritz felttired.
- The pizza tastedfunny.
- Fred wasdisgusted.
Adjective Complements. The second type of special adjective is called
anadjective complement,which is illustrated in sentence 49:
78 CHAPTER 3