Patterns of combinability

§ 211. Adjectives are combined with several parts of speech.

1. They may combine with nouns, which they may premodify or postmodify: a black dress, a chivalrous gentleman, the delegates present.

If there are several premodifying adjectives to one headword they have definite positional assignments. Generally descriptive adjectives precede the limiting ones, as in a naughty little boy, a beautiful French girl, but il there are several of each type, adjectives of different meanings stand in the following order:

Adjectives	Adjectives	Adjectives	Adjectives	Adjectives	Limiting
expressing	denoting	denoting	denoting	denoting	adjectives
judgement	size	colour	form	age
or general						Noun
characteri-
zation
pleasant	large	pale green	thick	old	French
horrid	small	bright red	round	young	left
nice	little	blue	square

For example: a large black and white hunting dog, a small pale green oval seed.

This order of words is of course not absolutely fixed, since many adjectives may be either descriptive or limiting (see above), depending on the context. The adjectives are not separated by commas, unless they belong to the same type: a nice little old man. However, if there is more than one adjective of the same type they are separated by commas: nasty, irritable, selfish man (all three belong to the type of ‘judgement or general characterization’).

Postmodification is usual for the adjectives elect, absent, present, concerned, involved, proper.

The president elect (that is: who has been elected and is soon to take office).

In several noun-phrases of French origin (mostly legal or quasilegal) the adjective is also postpositional.

attorney general heir apparent time immemorial

body politic Queen Regnant Lords Spiritual (Temporal)

These noun-phrases are very similar to compounds and some of them are spelt as a compound, with a hyphen (knight-errant, postmaster-general). The plural ending is attached either to the first element, or to the second:

court-martials postmaster-generals

courts-martial postmasters-general

Postmodification may be due to the structural complexity of postmodifiers (the children easiest to teach, the climate peculiar to this country), or to the presence of only or all in preposition (the only actor suitable, the only person visible, all the money available).

2. Beside their usual function, that of modifying nouns, adjectives may be combined with other words in the sentence.

They may be modified by adverbials of degree, like very, quite, that, rather, most, a lot, a sort of, a bit, enough, totally, perfectly, so... as: very long,a bit lazy,sort of naive, farenough, a little bit tired,a mostbeautiful picture, not so foolishas that, she is notthat crazy.

The adverb very can combine only with adjectives denoting the gradable properties. Thus it is possible to say very tired (tiredness may be of different degree), but it is impossible to say *very unknown, *very ceaseless, *very unique, as these adjectives do not allow of gradation.

With the adverb too the indefinite article is placed between the adjective and the head-noun. With the adverb rather the article is placed after it:

This is too difficult a problem to solve at once.

This is rather a complicated matter.

3. Predicative adjectives are combined with the link verbs tobe, toseem, to appear, to look, to turn, or notional verbs in a double predicate:

He looks tired. She does not seem so crazy as before. She is quite healthy. She felt faint. If sounded rather

fussy. The food tasted good. The flowers smell sweet.

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