THE ADJECTIVEAdjectives are words expressing properties and characteristics of objects (e.g. blue, simple, progressive, etc.) and, hence, qualifying nouns. Grammatically, four features are generally considered to be characteristic of adjectives: 1) their syntactic function of attributes; 2) their syntactic function of predicatives; 3) their taking of adverbial modifiers of degree (e.g. very); 4) their only grammatical category — the degrees of comparison. Adjectives in English do not change for number or case.
Morphological Composition Simple adjectives — old, kind, bad, good, etc. Derived adjectives. Many adjectives are formed from other parts of speech by adding different suffixes: -able: comfortable; -ic: atomic; -ible: visible; -ish: childish; -ant: elegant; -ive: attractive; -ent: dependent; -ful: careful; -al: cultural; -less: careless; -ly: brotherly, friendly; -ous: dangerous; -y: dirty, sleepy Some past participles ending in -ed (e.g. excited) and some present participles ending in -ing (e.g. exciting) are used as adjectives. Common pairs of -ed/-ing adjectives are: amazed / amazing; annoyed / annoying; bored / boring, enchanted / enchanting. Compound adjectives. They are used with hyphens: grass-green, deaf-mute, blue-eyed; long-legged; fair-haired.
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