Adjectives- Concept and Its Types

Adjectives 

Words that describe a noun or a pronoun is an adjective. 

They give more information about a noun or pronoun and add more details to it. 

For example: Girl and intelligent girl. 

Girl is a noun. Intelligent is an adjective. ‘Intelligent’ describes the noun ‘girl.’ 

Types of adjectives 

The different types of adjectives are: 

Descriptive adjectives 

Adjectives that show the quality or kind of a noun or pronoun are called descriptive adjectives. They answer the question“what kind” of noun. 

For example:Look at the blue sea. 

Quantitative adjectives 

Quantitative adjectives denote the quantity. They answer the question “how many.” 

Some examples are all, no, some, few, many, any, ech, every, either, whole, sufficient, most, none and little. 

For example:All students are present today. 

Demonstrative adjectives 

Adjectives that are used to identify the relative position of a noun are demonstrative adjectives. It answers the question “which ones”. 

For example: This book is interesting. 

In a sentence, the demonstrative adjective comes before a noun or pronoun. 

Proper adjectives 

Proper adjectives are derived from proper nouns.  

Proper adjectives are capitalised. 

Proper adjectives are used to show nationality, religion, culture etc. 

For example: I love Chinese food. 

Attributive adjectives 

In a sentence, the adjective that come before the noun it describes is called an attributive adjective. 

For example: I saw a pretty girl. 

Predicative adjectives 

In a sentence, the adjective that comes after a linking verb and describes the subject is called a predicative adjective. 

For example: The girl was pretty. 

Interrogative adjectives 

Interrogative adjectives are question words which are used before the noun they modify. These adjectives don’t stand alone. 

For example: Whose, which, what etc. 

Whose bag is it? 

Distributive adjectives 

Adjectives used to refer to each and every object or member of a group separately are Distributive adjectives. 

For example: Each, every, either, neither 

Every student has attended the test. 

These adjectives are used with singular nouns and they appear before the noun. 

Possessive adjectives 

Possessive adjectives indicate the possession of a noun to a person or group of people.My, your, his, her, their, its and our are possessive adjectives. 

For example: Johnny is my pet cat. 

Comparative adjectives 

Adjectives that are used to compare to different persons or things to each other are compartive adjectives. 

For example: My brother is shorter than me. 

Superlative adjectives 

Superlative adjectives are adjectives used to compare more than two people or things by indicating which one is supreme. 

For example: Alex is the tallest boy in our class. 

Compound adjectives 

Compound adjectives are those which are formed from multiple words and are connected using hyphens. 

For example: Bruno is a well-behaved dog. 

Participal adjectives 

Participal adjectives are based on participles which are words ending in –ed or –ing and derived from verbs. Words like amazing, impressed are examples. 

For example: The Christmas decoration is amazing. 

Limiting adjectives 

Limiting adjectives do not describe the qualities of a noun or pronoun but they restrict a noun or pronoun. They overlap with other types of adjectives like possessive and demonstrative adjectives. 

For example: Don’t eat those oranges.