Questions tagged [adjectives]
Words that describe or modify a noun or noun phrase.
112 questions
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Are the Sanskrit and Slavic adjectival suffixes cognate?
The words तृतीया (Tritiya) and Третья (Tretiya) seem almost identical, both being feminine adjectives in the nominative case. Obviously the roots are cognates descended of *trey-, but my question is ...
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Are there other languages having a definite/indefinite marking on adjectives?
The distinction between definite and indefinite adjective declension is well-known from many Germanic languages and from Balto-Slavic languages (cf. How is the the adjective in a definite noun phrase ...
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Constructing a Czech adverb from an adjective
I am looking for an algorithm to create Czech adverbs when given an adjective. I was looking for a decent set of rules, but I was not able to find anything comprehensive. Going from example words I ...
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How does one discern between atomic, relational, and intentional adjectives?
Some adjectives are atomic. They're just there and they presuppose nothing. Jolly is an example of this. "Bobby is a jolly boy" tells you everything you need to know about Bobby.
Other ...
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What is the difference between attributive adjective and predicative adjective?
When I began to read articles related to English adjectives, I often encountered these two names: "predicative adjectives" and "attributive adjectives". It seems that the author ...
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Why are these adjectives being presented as adverbs in syntax tree (Carnie, 3rd Edition)?
I am in a Syntax class where we use the textbook Syntax: A Generative Introduction, 3rd Edition by Andrew Carnie.
There is a tree presented in the chapter on x-bar theory that indicates that the words ...
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What is the formal semantics approach to predicative adjectives?
I am wondering if there is a standard treatment of expressions such as "x is ready" or "x is proud". It seems to me that something like BE(x,ready) or BE-READY(x) is not enough, ...
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Do any languages greatly restrict the placement of adjectives/adverbs in a phrase or sentence?
I am working on a conlang and wondering how natural languages might limit the placement of "modifiers" (adjectives and adverbs) in a sentence.
For example:
I eventually walked to the store.
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Why French Adjectives Uses BAGS
In French, most adjectives are positioned behind the noun e.g.
vache bleue
médecin étrange
orange énevrant
But sometimes you have an adjective following BAGS -- the adjective describes beauty, age,
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Detached Predicative with NONFINITE Clauses
I have just stumbled upon a sentence:
Dressed in a white dress, Stella looked breathtakingly beautiful.
I was wondering if the very first part of the sentence (Dressed in a white dress-nonfinite "...
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In the sentence 'he was very early', would it be correct to say that 'early' functions as both a noun and the object of the sentence?
I'm currently trying to construct my own language as an exercise, and I need to know if such a description is linguistically accurate, or if the word should be described otherwise.
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How do languages other than English deal with compound, hyphenated adjectives?
In looking at some long, hyphenated adjectives in English (or this), you find:
a twenty-one-gun salute
a five-acre farm
a five-day week
the four-colour problem
the low milk-and-cream-yielding dam
the ...
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Software internationalisation - displaying gendered adjectives
I'm currently working on an internationalisation project for a large web application - initially we're just implementing French but more languages will follow in time. One of the issues we've come ...
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Linguistic term for using masculine adjectives in front of feminine/plural nouns for emphasis in a language that has grammatical gender
Adjectives in languages that have grammatical gender have to be in agreement with the nouns they modify. In Classical Arabic, however, some adjectives were commonly used in their base form (masculine ...
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If adjectives denote functions of type <<e,t>,<e,t>>, then what denotation of *be* will allow adjectives to appear in predicative position?
Suppose [[gray]] = λf ∈ D<e,t> . [λx ∈ De . f(x) = 1 and x is gray]. Since this function is of type <<e,t>,<e,t>>, it would seem that sentences like Julius is gray are ...
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Are these "phrases" or "clauses" before a noun a modifier adjective?
In these clauses or sentences "I love those "I love you" messages" or "I hate those "I love you" messages",
Is this "phrase" or "clause", &...
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Origin of describing emotions with adjectives associated with taste
You might have seen that most of the adjectives that are related to taste are used to describe emotions.
Salty, sour, sweet, bitter etc. We use these adjectives to describe people and their emotions.
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Pronominalized adjectives in Lithuanian
This is a question for those who are native speakers of Lithuanian or have a very good proficiency in Lithuanian as a second language. As for your feeling, are the definite or pronominalized ...
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Are there any studies on marked adjective order in the NP in head initial languages like Spanish or Albanian?
For example, Spanish unmarked NP order is Noun-Adjective ("libro rojo", "casa grande"). However, there are many situations where the order is reversed ("un rojo atardecer", "es un buen libro", "tienes ...
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What grammatical features should we assign to the Danish superlative forms -st and -ste?
When entering Danish lexemes into Wikidata, I have been unsure which grammatical features one should assign to the Danish superlative forms "-st" and "-ste" for adjectives, e.g., in bedst and bedste. ...
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Why do adjectives come before nouns in English?
Why does the attributive adjective come before a noun in English? In most languages, the adjective comes always after a noun. For example, white car is written as the equivalent of car white in Latin ...
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The Grelling-Nelson Paradox
The following excerpt is from Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter.
Divide the adjectives in English into two categories: those which are self-descriptive, such as "...
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Name for adjectives modifying the verb within a noun rather than the noun itself (as in "illegal immigrant")
I'm interested in the phenomenon where people object to "illegal" as though it is inaccurate because the person implied by "immigrant" cannot be illegal in merely being a person. While moral and legal ...
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Is gradable vs absolute a universal distinction?
Inspired by multiple questions on ELU and in particular this recent question about 'correct', I wonder whether French has the similar concept of gradable vs absolute adjectives.
The idea is that some ...
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Is "bien décidés" an adjectival phrase?
Mais il me faut quelques volontaires bien décidés.
in that sentence, décidés is considered as an adjective right? So does the phrase bien décidés an adjectival phrase or adverbial phrase?
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