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The adjectives good and bad have the irregular forms better, best and worse, worst; also far becomes farther, farthest or further, furthest. The adjective old (for which the regular older and oldest are usual) also has the irregular forms elder and eldest, these generally being restricted to use in comparing siblings and in
An adjective (abbreviated adj.) is a word that describes or defines a noun or noun phrase.Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives are considered one of the main parts of speech of the English language, although historically they were classed together with nouns. [1]
The nominal group is a structure which includes nouns, adjectives, numerals and determiners, which is associated with the thing under description (a.k.a. entity), and whose supporting logic is Description Logic. The term noun has a narrower purview and is detached from any notion of entity description.
For example, because martial is a postpositive adjective in the phrase court-martial, the plural is courts-martial, the suffix being attached to the noun rather than the adjective. This pattern holds for most postpositive adjectives, with the few exceptions reflecting overriding linguistic processes such as rebracketing.
In English, most words are uninflected, while the inflected endings that exist are mostly ambiguous: -ed may mark a verbal past tense, a participle or a fully adjectival form; -s may mark a plural noun, a possessive noun, or a present-tense verb form; -ing may mark a participle, gerund, or pure adjective or noun.
The word grammar is derived from Greek γραμματικὴ τέχνη (grammatikḕ téchnē), which means "art of letters", from γράμμα (grámma), "letter", itself from γράφειν (gráphein), "to draw, to write". [3]
The adjective small is a modifier, not a determinative. In contrast, if the adjective is replaced or preceded by a possessive NP (I live in my house) or a determiner (I live in that house), then it becomes grammatical because possessive NPs and determiners function as determinatives. [1]: 538
Chomsky describes gerundive nominals as being formed from propositions of subject-predicate form, such as with the suffix “-ing” in English. [14] Gerundive nominals also do not have the internal structure of a noun phrase and so cannot be replaced by another noun. [14] Adjectives cannot be inserted into the gerundive nominal. [14]