📄️ Introduction
English has a large class of adjectives which can express a variety of meanings: classification, description, evaluation and many other ideas. Most European languages, and many others, have similar classes of adjectives. Some of the world’s languages, however, have few if any adjectives. In such languages the relevant ideas might be expressed by using nouns or verbs; so the equivalent of, for example, She’s angry could be something corresponding to ‘She has anger’ or ‘She rages’.
📄️ Adjectives: normal position
Two positions
📄️ Order of adjectives
When several adjectives come before a noun (or when nouns are used as modifiers before another noun), they are usually put in a more or less fixed order. However, this is a complicated grammatical area, and it is not possible to give simple reliable rules for adjective order. The following guidelines will help.
📄️ Adjectives with *and*
When two or more adjectives (or other modifiers) come together, we sometimes put and before the last one, and sometimes not. It depends partly on their position in the sentence, and partly the kinds of information they give.
📄️ Adjectives after nouns and pronouns
Adjectives come immediately after nouns in a few special cases.
📄️ Adjectives: position after *as*, *how*, *so*, *too*
After as, how, so, too and this/that meaning so, adjectives go before a/an. This structure is common in a formal style.
📄️ Adjectives without nouns
We cannot usually leave out a noun after an adjective.
📄️ Gradable and non-gradable adjectives
Adjectives can be divided into gradable and non-gradable. Gradable adjectives (e.g. difficult, important, happy, tired) are words for qualities that exist in different degrees. Things can be more or less difficult or important; people can be more or less happy or tired. Non-gradable adjectives (e.g. impossible, essential, alive, exhausted) are words for ‘either-or’ qualities. We don’t generally say that some things are more impossible than others, or that somebody is not very exhausted: things are either impossible or not, and people are either exhausted or not.
📄️ Measurements: ‘marked’ and ‘unmarked’ forms
Many adjectives that are used in measurements come in pairs (e.g. tall/short, old/young, heavy/light, fast/slow). The word that is used for the ‘top’ end of the measurement scale can usually be used in another sense, to talk about the quality in general. For instance, one can ask how long something is even if it is relatively short. Grammarians call these uses ‘unmarked’. Compare:
📄️ Pronunciation of aged, naked, etc
A few adjectives ending in \-ed have a special pronunciation: the last syllable is pronounced /ɪd/ instead of /d/ or /t/ (see here).
📄️ What can follow an adjective?
Many adjectives can be followed by ‘complements’ – words and expressions that ‘complete’ their meaning. Not all adjectives are followed by the same kind of complement. Some can be followed by preposition + noun/\-ing (see here).