Understanding Adjective Clauses and Their Functions in English Grammar

Posted on Aug 27, 2024 in Social sciences

SUPPLEMENTIVE ADJECTIVE CLAUSE

Subject-Oriented

  1. a. Very happy, Mary ate the cake.
  2. b. Hungry, Mary bought a sandwich.

Object-Oriented

  1. a. We bathed Mary, now clean.
  2. b. We hunt the bird, now dead.

Sentence-Oriented

  1. a. Surprisingly, everybody wanted her dress.
  2. b. Most important, my mother loved cats.

In these examples we discover that:

  1. The adjective phrases aren’t essential units for the syntactico-semantic completion of the sentence.
  2. Each adjective phrase makes reference to different syntactic elements: a. the subject, b. the object, c. the sentence itself.
  3. The verb “to be” is understood or underlying.
  4. Syntactico-semantic similarity between the subject-oriented adjective verbless clause and the optional word class par excellence, the adverb. Ex: very sad — sadly.

NOMINAL FUNCTION

Adjectival forms could also play the role of a noun: a. The poor are next to my house.

We have to consider that:

  1. The adjectives should be understood as the head of noun phrases.
  2. The adjectives with the determiner “the” form an adjective phrase.
  3. Adjective-noun conversion.

As adjectives can function in situations for nouns: subjects, complements, objects, and complements of a preposition. A syntactic characterization of this adjectival functioning is necessary.

Syntactic Characterization

  1. Adjectives with a nominal function don’t admit plurality: a. The blind can’t see. b. *The blinds can’t see.
  2. Adjectives with a nominal function reject the possessive morpheme: a. The moans of the sick was terrible. b. *The sick’s moans was terrible.
  3. Adjectives in this formal function are always accompanied by the determiner “the”: a. The Spanish like flamenco. b. *A Spanish like flamenco.
  4. With these adjectival forms, it is always plural when having personal referents or singular when referring to an abstraction: a. The wounded usually die on their way to urgencies. b. *The wounded usually dies on his way to urgencies.

Semantic Characterization

These have a generic implication. Three types of adjectives form:

  1. Classes of person, they always have plural agreement: the sick, the poor, the blind.
  2. Those indicating nationality: the Spanish, the French.
  3. Those referring to an abstraction: the best.

FORMAL CRITERIA

Lexical items adopting a comparison paradigm by inflectional morphemes are categorized as adjectives: a. My sister was the greatest student of his class. b. Chocolate has a higher level of milk than bread.

Some lexical items can be identified as adjectives with derivational morphemes: a. Money doesn’t make you happy. b. Money doesn’t bring you happiness (noun). c. Money doesn’t make you live happily (adverb).

You may be dissatisfied because:

  1. Not all adjectives can express degree and take the inflectional suffixes. Ex: infinite, extreme, pregnant…etc.
  2. Other adjective forms can’t use inflectionally suffixes. Ex: a. She is more beautiful than me. b. *She is beautifuler than me.
  3. Some adverbs also admit degree: a. Mary came earlier today.
  4. Verbs also admit degree by certain verb intensifiers: a. It was done nicely. b. He worked as much as he could.
  5. Not all the adjectives admit the derivational morpheme (-ness) or (-ly): a. *His oldness impressed us. b. *He lived his life oldly.
  6. We can find lexical items with (-ly) where the bases are not adjectives and are not classifiable as adverbs. a. She is a lovely child.

SYNTACTIC CRITERIA

Three syntactic slots of adjectives:

  1. Attributive position (before the noun) where the adjective ascribes a quality or attribute to the entity linguistically expressed by the head noun. They are called attributive adjectives. a. The big boat was broken. b. She isn’t a bad girl.
  2. Predicative position (in the predicate). The adjective is one autonomous syntactic element within the predicate and the verb “to be.” They are called predicative adjectives. The adjective functioning as a subject complement (Cs) or as an object complement (Co). a. Mary is nice, Mum says. (Cs) b. She made me happy. (Co).
  3. Postpositive position (after the noun). The adjective is after the noun, they are called postpositive adjectives: a. He is the man responsible for this.

EXERCISE 1

1. THE BOY IS LOVELY. 2. HE IS A LOVELY BOY.

  1. Formal criteria: (love)+(-ly)= base noun/verb + derivational morph. Base adj + (-ly)= adverb. Love is not an adjective and lovely is not an adverb. In this case, lovely is an adjective.
  2. Syntactic criteria:
    1. Lovely: is a predicative adjective, it occupies a predicative position. It is an independent element. In this case, it has the function of Cs.
    2. Lovely boy: is an attributive adjective because it ascribes a quality or attribute to the entity linguistically expressed by the head noun.
  3. Semantic aspects: It’s a referent modification or inherent adjective because it refers to the referent of the head noun.

EXERCISE 2

  1. Taller: Cs – Yes
  2. Terrified: Adjective Verbless/Noun – No
  3. The old: Object – Yes
  4. The blind: Subject – Yes
  5. Cold: Object Complement – No
  6. More stupid: Subject Complement – Yes
  7. The obvious: Object – Yes
  8. Very interesting: Object Complement – Yes
  9. Uncertain: Adjective Verbless/Noun – No
  10. The disabled: Object – Yes