English Grammar: The Parts of Speech

Parts of Speech — Adjectives

Assuming you have been reading the lessons in order, you learned how nouns, pronouns, verbs, and verb phrases function in English. With these three parts of speech you can build the framework of any sentence. But it is only a framework. The sentence that contains only a noun or a pronoun and a verb is not a very interesting sentence. It does not give very specific information, or present a very interesting picture. Such sentences become very monotonous if repeated often, as you will clearly see from the following illustrations:

Birds fly.

Men work.

He swims.

Dogs bark.

She knits.

They sing.

You will generally find it necessary to add other parts of speech to a skeleton sentence to make the meaning clearer and more exact. You can add words to nouns and pronouns that tell what kind, what color, which one, etc. If you wanted to tell about the hat a woman was wearing, you would describe the hat in some way. You might say that it was a large hat, an gaudy hat, or a red hat, depending upon the meaning which you intended to convey.

When you add one or more of these describing words to hat, you give a clearer picture of what the hat is like. Words which add new ideas to nouns and pronouns are called adjectives.

The adjective not only describes by telling what kind or what color, but it may limit the meaning by telling which hat, whose hat, or the number of hats. For example, you might limit the meaning by saying that hat, Fred's hat, two hats, or several hats.

In grammar, we say that the adjective modifies the meaning of the noun or pronoun. The word modify means to change the meaning slightly by describing or limiting the meaning to a certain kind or to a certain number.

When we speak of a hat as an attractive hat, we are limiting the meaning because we are leaving out all the hats that are not attractive. If a word describes, limits, or restricts the meaning in any way, it is called a modifier. This is an important term that is frequently used in grammar.

The words a, an, and the are adjectives although in grammar they are called articles. The word the is called the definite article. The words a and an are called the indefinite articles. When we say, the book on the table, we are pointing out a particular book on a particular table. When we say, I have a book, no specific or particular book is indicated.

Adjectives Modifying Nouns

The following examples show how adjectives modify nouns and how their use makes the meaning clearer or more explicit.

long road

good friend

rainy day

rusty nail

beautiful dress

accurate accountant

old piano

worthy cause

rapid typist

five dollars

steep hill

essential parts

intelligent answer

difficult task

juicy orange

REMINDER: An adjective is a word used to modify a noun or a pronoun.