ADJECTIVES AND ITS TYPES
“My sister has each of these five marvelous vintage paintings”.
If you remove all the adjectives from this sentence, what would you be left with?
‘Sister has paintings’.
Crazy, isn’t it? We use adjectives all the time, sometimes without even realizing it!
An adjective can add colour and life to your sentence, and it can add important information but that’s not all.
Adjectives have many other uses.
They can tell you:
· Quantity (how much)
· Quality (how well) of things
· Help you compare things.
Examples:
The team has a dangerous batsman. (What kind?)
I have ten candies in my pocket. (How many?)
I loved that red car. (Which one?)
I earn more money than he does. (How much?)
In other words, adjectives are wonderful, amazing and fantastic!
An adjective usually comes right before a noun:
a purple dress
ten people
When an adjective follows verbs such as be or seem, it is called a predicate adjective.
Examples:
That building is huge.
The workers seem happy.
An adjective normally indicates quality, size, shape, duration, feelings, contents, and more about a noun or pronoun.
However, there are also many adjectives which do not fit into these questions. Adjectives are the most used parts of speech in sentences. There are several types of adjectives according to their uses.
1. Descriptive
A descriptive adjective is probably what you think of when you hear the word ‘adjective.’
Descriptive adjectives are used to describe nouns and pronouns.
Words like — beautiful, cute, silly, tall, annoying, loud and nice are all descriptive adjectives.
These adjectives add information and qualities to the words they’re modifying.
Examples:
I have a fast car. (The word ‘fast’ is describing an attribute of the car)
“The beautiful flowers have a nice smell”( beautiful, nice gives us a lot more information, with two descriptive adjectives)
“The cat is hungry,” or “The hungry cat.” (In both cases, the word hungry is an adjective describing the cat).
2. Quantitative
Quantitative adjectives describe the quantity of something.
In other words, they answer the question “how much?” or “how many?”
Examples:
“How many watches do you have?” “I only have one watch.”
“Do you plan of buying more watches?” “Oh yes, I want many watches!”
I can’t believe I ate that whole cake!
I have 20 bucks in my wallet. (How much)
They have three children. (How many)
3. Demonstrative
A demonstrative adjective describes “which” noun or pronoun you’re referring to. These adjectives include the words:
· This — Used to refer to a singular noun close to you.
· That — Used to refer to a singular noun far from you.
· These — Used to refer to a plural noun close to you.
· Those — Used to refer to a plural noun far from you.
The four demonstrative adjectives are identical to the demonstrative pronouns.
Demonstrative adjectives always come before the word they’re modifying (noun/pronoun).
Whereas, A demonstrative pronoun works alone and does not precede a noun.
Examples:
“Which bicycle is yours?” “This bicycle is mine.”
That building is so gorgeously decorated. (‘That’ refers to a singular noun far from the speaker)
Those toys are mine. (‘Those’ refers to a plural noun far from the speaker)
4. Possessive
Possessive adjectives show possession. They describe to whom a thing belongs. Some of the most common possessive adjectives include:
· My — Belonging to me
· His — Belonging to him
· Her — Belonging to her
· Their — Belonging to them
· Your — Belonging to you
· Our — Belonging to us
All these adjectives always come before a noun. Unlike possessive pronouns, these words demand a noun after them.
Examples:
My car is parked outside.
His cat is very cute.
Our job is almost done.
Her books are interesting.
5. Interrogative
Interrogative adjectives interrogate (ask a question).
These adjectives must be followed by a noun or a pronoun, and are used to form questions.
The interrogative adjectives are:
· Which — Asks to make a choice between options.
· What — Asks to make a choice (in general).
· Whose — Asks who something belongs to.
*Other question words, like “who” or “how,” aren’t adjectives since they don’t modify nouns.
Which, what and whose are only considered adjectives if they’re immediately followed by a noun.
“Which colour is your favourite?” (adjective)
**“Which is your favourite colour?” (not adjective)
Examples:
Which song will you play on your wedding day?
What pet do you want to get?
Whose child is this?
Which phone do you use?
What game do you want to play?
Whose car is this?
6. Distributive
Distributive adjectives describe specific members out of a group. These adjectives are used to single out one or more individual, items or people.
Such as:
· Each — Every single one of a group (used to speak about group members individually).
· Every — Every single one of a group (used to make generalizations).
· Either — One between a choice of two.
· Neither — Not one or the other between a choice of two.
· Any — One or some things out of any number of choices.
Examples:
Every rose has its thorn
Which of these two songs do you like?” “I don’t like either of them.
Every nation is proud of its culture
Neither of them got majority.
Either of you can collect the prize.
I love any song that Sakira sings.
Choose the one you like.
Both of them are in the room.
7. Articles
There are only three articles in the English language- a, an and the.
Although articles are on their own a different part of speech, they’re technically also adjectives!
Articles are used to describe which noun you’re referring to.
However, We will be discussing its usage in detail in the upcoming blogs of this series.
