Lesson 3: Describing Words
Adjectives
Adjectives are words that describe a noun (or pronoun). We have already mentioned adjectives, both in distinguishing between demonstratives, and also in our discussion of the object complement. Now we will take a much closer look.
“A pretty red house stood on that tall grassy hill.”
In this single sentence above, six out of the ten words are adjectives! Adjectives give life to sentences by painting pictures and telling us what things are like. The question to ask when we are trying to figure out if a word is an adjective, or—more to the point—if a word or phrase is acting adjectivally (like an adjective) in a sentence is: Is the word modifying a noun and telling me more about it? There are several categories of adjectives.
Descriptive Adjectives
Descriptive adjectives answer the question “What kind?”
What kind of house? A pretty red house. What kind of hill? A tall, grassy hill. There are innumerable descriptive words in the English language, and these are often the easiest to identify as adjectives when we are reading.
Degrees
Descriptive adjectives also have “degrees.” The degree can be positive, comparative, and superlative. Let’s look at the adjectives we used above in our sentence about the house:
Degrees of Descriptive Adjectives
Positive
Comparative
Superlative
pretty
prettier
prettiest
red
redder
reddest
tall
taller
tallest
grassy
grassier
grassiest
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As you can see, the positive degree is simply the adjective, while the comparative degree is the form of the adjective you would use to compare the noun it’s describing to something else: “This house is prettier than that house.” The superlative is the extreme: “This house is the prettiest on the block.”
You will also have noticed that “red” and ”grassy” were a bit awkward to apply degrees to. Not all adjectives lend themselves to the comparative and superlative degrees.
Limiting Adjectives
Limiting adjectives answer the questions “How many?” or “Which?” They limit the possibilities of the noun being described, and therefore make a description more precise. There are many sub-categories of limiting adjectives.
Articles Wait, we already covered the articles! Yes we did, but it is worth pointing out that they, in fact, modify a noun and answer the question “Which?” Indeed, they are often classified as article adjectives. So why don’t we parse and diagram articles as adjectives in this course? We view them as unique adjectives that logically fit better “stuck to” the noun they modify. Therefore we parse them Art and diagram them next to their noun.
Numbers Here we don’t mean singular/plural, as we do with verbs, but rather actual numbers. Numbers answer the question “How many?” How many pretty houses were on the block? There were three pretty houses on the block.
Demonstrative As we learned in lesson two, demonstratives can be pronouns or adjectives. We learned that when the demonstrative is replacing a noun and is followed by a verb, it’s a demonstrative pronoun (“This is a great house!”). But when the demonstrative is next to and modifying a noun, it is a demonstrative adjective (“This house is great!”).
Indefinite Just like there are indefinite pronouns (somebody, whoever) which replace a noun, there are indefinite adjectives which modify or describe a noun. For example, “Some houses are on the hill.” The distinction is going to be similar to demonstratives—pay attention to whether the indefinite is replacing a noun and followed by a verb, or if it is describing a noun next to it.
“Most people like pretty houses.” (adjective)
“Most like pretty houses.” (pronoun)
“Much work was lost because of the power outage.” (adjective) “Much was lost because of the power outage.” (pronoun)
“Any house will do.” (adjective)
“Any will do.” (pronoun)
Interrogative This deals with a question, and again needs to be distinguished from the equivalent pronouns by asking those same questions about replacing versus describing.
“Which house did you buy?” (adjective)
“Which did you buy?” (pronoun)
“Whose house is that?” (adjective)
“Whose is that?” (pronoun)
“What gardening zone are we in?” (adjective)
“What are we in?” (pronoun)
Note: Another important category is that of Possessive Adjectives. But since these are so special and significant in the Bible, we are going to teach you to handle them in a particular way. We’ll cover this topic of Genitives in lesson 4.