The Role of Adjectives in the English Language

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Adjectives play a crucial role in the English language, serving as the third major class of words after nouns and verbs. In this coursework, I aim to delve into the intricacies of adjectives as a notional part of speech. An adjective is a word that conveys the attributes of substances, such as "good," "young," "easy," "soft," "loud," "hard," "wooden," and "flaxen." As lexical words, adjectives are distinguished by their ability to occupy the position between a noun-determiner and a noun, as well as the position following a copula-verb and a qualifier.

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Each adjective used in a sentence establishes a relationship with a noun, indicating the properties of the noun's referent, including its material, color, dimensions, position, state, and other characteristics, whether permanent or temporary. Unlike nouns, adjectives do not possess a complete nominative value. Words like "long," "hospitable," and "fragrant" cannot stand alone as independent nominations; they only exist in collocations within informative sequences to describe qualities such as length, hospitality, and scent.

The semantically bound nature of adjectives in English is highlighted by the use of the prop-substitute "one" when the head-noun of the phrase is absent. For example, "I don't want a yellow balloon, let me have the green one over there." Conversely, when an adjective is placed in a nominatively self-dependent position, it can be substantivized, as in "Outside it was a beautiful day, and the sun tinged the snow with red," compared to "The sun tinged the snow with the red color."

Morphological Properties

Adjectives in English lack number, case, and gender distinctions.

While some adjectives have degrees of comparison, forming part of the language's morphological system, English adjectives differ significantly from highly inflected languages like Russian, Latin, and German, as well as Modern French. English adjectives typically have three morphological forms: base (or simple), derivative, and compound.

Base Adjectives

Base adjectives exhibit specific formal qualities, including the ability to take inflections such as -er and -est or undergo morphophonemic changes in cases of suppletion, as seen in pairs like "good — better — the best" and "bad — worse — the worst." These adjectives also serve as stems for forming nouns and adverbs through derivational suffixes like -ness and -ly. Base adjectives are typically one-syllable words, with only a few exceptions that begin with prefixes like un- or in-, such as "uncommon" and "inhuman."

Base adjectives do not have derivational suffixes and usually form comparative and superlative degrees using inflectional suffixes -er and -est. Many base adjectives can also be converted into verbs by adding the derivational suffix -en, the prefix en-, or both, as in "blacken," "brighten," "cheapen," "sweeten," and others.

Derived Adjectives

Derived adjectives are created by adding derivational suffixes to free or bound stems. These adjectives typically form comparative and superlative degrees analytically using qualifiers like "more" and "most."

Adjectives are a fundamental component of language, providing essential details and descriptions that enhance communication and understanding. By exploring the various forms and functions of adjectives, we gain a deeper insight into the structure and nuances of the English language.