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An adjective comes before the noun it modifies in its unmarked position. However, the possessive and reflexive pronominal adjectives can occur either to the left or to the right of the noun it describes. Negation must come either to the left or to the right of the verb it negates. For compound verbs or verbal construction using auxiliaries the ...
English adjectives can take clauses, preposition phrases, and noun phrases as complements. Clause complements in adjective phrases can be either finite or nonfinite. Finite clause complements can be declarative (e.g., very pleased that I had bought his book) or interrogative (e.g., not sure whether I want to keep reading).
A clause typically contains a subject (a noun phrase) and a predicate (a verb phrase in the terminology used above; that is, a verb together with its objects and complements). A dependent clause also normally contains a subordinating conjunction (or in the case of relative clauses, a relative pronoun, or phrase containing one).
The distinguishing characteristic of an attributive adjective phrase is that it appears inside the noun phrase that it modifies. [2] An interesting trait of these phrases in English is that an attributive adjective alone generally precedes the noun, e.g. a proud man, whereas a head-initial or head-medial adjective phrase follows its noun, e.g. a man proud of his children. [3]
In many Indo-European, Finnic, and Semitic languages, case is marked on the noun, the determiner, and usually the adjective. Other systems are less common. Other systems are less common. In some languages, there is double-marking of a word as both genitive (to indicate semantic role) and another case such as accusative (to establish concord ...
the form of the verb used is formally nominalised and cannot occur in an independent clause; the clause-final conjunction or suffix attached to the verb is a marker of case and is also used in nouns to indicate certain functions. In this sense, the subordinate clauses of these languages have much in common with postpositional phrases.
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.
Relative clause following the head noun, as in English, French or Arabic. Relative clause preceding the head noun, as in Turkish, Japanese, or Chinese. Head noun within the relative clause (an internally headed relative clause). An example of such a language is Navajo. These languages are said to have nonreduced relative clauses. These ...