Adjectives - SS1 English Lesson Note

Meaning of Adjectives

Adjectives are words which are used to qualify nouns and pronouns. They act as qualifiers of the nouns or pronouns and hence, they give fuller meanings to nouns and pronouns.

Functions of Adjectives

1. Adjectives qualify nouns: the primary function of adjectives is that they are used to qualify nouns or pronouns. Examples are: (a) the teacher took a wise decision.         (b) The old woman told us an interesting story.

2. Attributive and predicative function: The main syntactic functions of adjectives are attributive and predicative. Adjectives are attributive when they pre-modify nouns, that is, when they appear before the noun of a head phrase. Examples are: (a) the beautiful girl.     (b) The main argument.

Predicative adjectives complete the meaning of the verb, i.e. when an adjective is used as a part of the predicate. Predicative adjectives can be:

(a) Subject Complement. E.g. your wife is pretty.

(b) Object Complement, e.g. the man made his wife happy.

3. Adjectives as head of a noun phrase: they can also function as heads of noun phrases. Adjectives functioning as noun-phrase heads generally require a definite article ‘the’ before them. Examples are:

The rich will help only the humble poor.

The example in the above sentence is noun phrases with adjectives as heads. Such noun phrases refer to the entire membership of a class as the adjective in each phrase describes the classes of ‘the rich’ and ‘the poor’. This kind of structure takes a plural verb. Examples are:

a.) The poor abound in Nigeria.  (b.)The sick are weaker than the healthy.

Comparison of adjectives

Adjectives have three degrees of comparison: positive, comparative and superlative adjectives. There are: regular comparison and irregular comparisons.

Regular comparison: these are adjectives that have one syllable are compared by adding –‘er’ and –‘est’ to the positive form of the adjective at the comparative and superlative levels respectively.

Examples are:

Positive

(base)

Comparative

(-er)

Superlative level

(-est)

1

big

bigger

biggest

2

Fast

Faster

fastest

3

Short

shorter

shortest

4

Tall

taller

tallest

5

wise

wiser

wisest

(2) Adjectives of more than two syllables and most adjectives of two syllables are compared by prefixing more and most or less and least

Positive

(base)

Comparative

+(more)

Superlative level

+(most)

1

serious

more serious

most serious

2

beautiful

more beautiful

most beautiful

3

handsome

more handsome

most handsome

4

intelligent

more intelligent

most intelligent

5

interesting

more intelligent

most intelligent