The English Language english language

The Major Parts of Speech

Exercise

1. Extend the list of adjectival derivational endings. If you are in doubt
   about an ending consult a good desk dictionary or a reference grammar.


2. Which of the italicized words in the sentences below are adjectives?
   Justify your answers solely by Tests 7a, 7b, and 8.
   a. Your tie is outlandish.
   b. I have no particular doubts about your proposal.
   c. The chamber contains more particular matter than that one.
   d. Zubin is quite unstable.
   e. Some dogs are mean.


3. The last two derivational suffixes in Table 6 are superficially identical
   to verb forms in the present participle (Ving) and the regular forms of
   the past tense (Ved) and past participle (Ven). Think of example sen-
   tences that the adjectives appear in; think of sentences in which the
   verb forms appear. How can you differentiate the two? (We have noted
   that there is an ongoing historical process through which participles
   shift to adjectives. The process apparently occurs word by word. Can
   you identify any other verbs that are currently in the course of becom-
   ing adjectives?)


4. In a dictionary, look up the meanings and other grammatical charac-
   teristics of the adjective-creating suffixes in Table 6.

The tests we have provided eliminate from the list of adjectives many sorts of
words that have been traditionally included with this class, to the confusion of
many people. For instance, cardinal numerals such as five and ordinal numer-
als such as fifth cannot be called adjectives, since we do not say fiver or fivest
or fifther or fifthest. Similarly we exclude (a) the articles the and a/an; (b) the
demonstratives this, that, these, and those; (c) indefinites, including quantifiers
such as all, no, every; (d) possessive pronouns such as my, your, their; and (e)
interrogative pronouns such as what and which. All of these forms regularly
modify nouns. None of them are adjectives.
To Tests 7 and 8, we can add one further formal feature of adjectives, their
position in a sentence. Adjectives occur in a very limited set of positions.
The two most common are (a) between a determiner (an article or article-like
word) and a noun, and (b) after a linking verb (i.e., of the be-become-seem