Surely all students know what an adjective is. But many adults are likely to find it difficult to answer such a question. Over time, even basic things are forgotten. In which classes of the school is the adjective studied in detail? Grade 4, 5th, 6th ... How long ago! We offer to return to distant years and refresh your memory.
Independent part of speech
The adjective name in Russian answers the questions “what”, “what”, “what”, “what”, “whose”, “whose”, “whose”, “whose” and means the sign of the subject. It varies in numbers, childbirth, cases, can have a short form. Most often in sentences it acts as a definition, but it can also be in the role of a predicate.
Discharges
The adjective as part of speech has only one invariable morphological attribute - this is discharge. Highlight, qualitative, possessive, relative linguistic units. We will tell you more about each category.
Quality adjectives
Words of this category answer the questions “what”, “which”, “which”, “which” indicate the sign that can be to a lesser or greater degree. High-quality adjectives, as a rule, go well with the adverbs "too", "very" and their synonyms, for example, too beautiful, very large, extremely smart.
From such words, by repetition, you can form a complex adjective, for example, big-big, tasty-tasty. You can also attach the prefix ne- to the word and get as a result the same-root adjective, for example, ugly, not stupid. Usually, high-quality structural language units have antonyms (high - low), and in some cases also hyperonyms (large - huge). It should be noted that not all words meet the above characteristics, there are those that do not satisfy these characteristics.
Word forms
The peculiarity of high-quality adjectives is that many of them have a full and short form, for example, smart - smart, tasty - tasty. At the same time, the short form is not inclined at all, but the full one is inclined by cases, childbirth, numbers. Often in sentences, short adjectives serve as a predicate, and complete ones as a definition. Some words do not have a short form at all, for example, amicable, friendly, while others do not have a complete one, for example, much, necessary, must, glad.
Degrees of comparison
The story that such an adjective will not be complete if you do not touch upon such a characteristic of this part of speech as the degree of comparison. The attribute is inherent only to high-quality language units. Three degrees of comparison are distinguished:
1) positive, indicating that an object or group of objects has some sign, for example, a beautiful flower;
2) comparative, meaning that one or another sign is more pronounced in one object or group of objects than in another (others), for example, the wolf is larger than the hare, or in the same object (same objects), but already in another time, for example, in the future I will be smarter;
3) excellent, meaning that an object or set of objects has some sign to a greater extent than all other objects from the same group, for example, the best doctor in the hospital, the strongest player in the team.
To form an adjective to a comparative extent, you can use additional words, for example: the most beautiful, higher. In this case, part of the speech takes on a composite, or, as they say, analytical form. When the degree of comparison is expressed in only one word, the form is called simple, or synthetic. It should be emphasized that not all adjectives can have a comparative and superlative degree. Words that are not qualitative in the category of such characteristics are not inherent.
Relative adjectives
These are linguistic units that answer the questions “whose,” “whose,” “whose,” “whose,” and indicate a sign that cannot be less or less. They express the relation of an object to another object (doorbell), property (washing powder), material (glass vase), place (Moscow yard), time (October day), unit of measure (three-story house, seven-year-old child, kilogram bag) and so on. Such adjectives cannot be combined with the adverbs "too", "very" and their synonyms, they do not have a short form, degrees of comparison. They also have no antonyms.
Possessive adjectives
These words answer the questions “whose”, “whose”, “whose”, “whose”, and indicate the belonging of a certain object to a person or living creature, for example, sisters, paternal, fox. These linguistic units, as in the previous case, do not have degrees of comparison, antonyms, short form, do not combine with the adverbs "too", "very" and their synonyms.
Discharge boundaries
Narrating about what an adjective is, it is worth noting one feature. The fact is that the lexical-grammatical boundaries of the words of this part of speech are very mobile, so it is sometimes difficult to correctly determine the rank. So, possessive, relative adjectives can easily take on a qualitative meaning. For example, in the phrase “dog’s paw” the word “dog” will be a possessive adjective, in the phrase “dog’s flock” - relative, and in the phrase “dog’s life” - high-quality.
Types of declination
Words related to the part of speech that we are considering may be inclined by cases, numbers, and in the singular also by gender. This does not apply to comparative adjectives and short adjectives that are not inclined. There are a certain number of non-declining words, for example, beige jackets.
Case, number, gender of adjectives depend on the same characteristics of nouns with which they are consistent. Depending on the basis, there are three variants of declination:
- solid: white, white, white ;
- soft: winter, winter, winter;
- mixed: bad, bad, bad.
Word formation
The adjective as part of speech can be formed in different ways:
- prefix: joyful - joyless;
- suffix: swamp - swamp;
- prefix-suffix: earth - underground;
- the compounding of two bases: three colors - tricolor, pale and pink - pale pink;
- sophisticated: flax + seed + cleaning - flaxseed.
Morphological analysis
In school, in the lessons of the Russian language, teachers quite often give children the task of making a morphological analysis of a word relating to a particular part of speech. How to make an analysis of the adjective? To do this, determine the following characteristics of the language unit:
- The grammatical meaning.
- The initial form, that is, the form of the masculine, nominative, singular. For example, the adjective "bad" in the initial form will be the word "good."
- Permanent symptoms. As you remember, there is only one such sign - discharge. The adjective “bad” is qualitative.
- Variable signs: form (short / complete), degree of comparison (comparative / positive / excellent), gender, case, number. The first two signs (form and degree of comparison) are characteristic only for high-quality adjectives. For example, the analysis of our word “bad” will look like this: used in full form, positive degree of comparison, genitive, masculine, singular.
- Syntactic role: predicate or definition. In our case, the adjective "bad" is the definition.
Transition to other parts of speech
The participles and pronouns often pass into the category of adjectives. For example, there is no musician from him. In turn, adjectives are able to substantiate into the category of nouns, for example, military, Russian.
Features of this part of speech in other languages
We hope that thanks to the article you were able to recall what an adjective is. It is worth saying that not all characteristics inherent in this part of speech in the Russian language will take place in other linguistic systems. For example, adjectives in English by numbers and cases do not change, in French - by cases they also do not decline, but they change by numbers. In Japanese, adjectives are generally immutable, they have tenses and determine the politeness of speech. In Portuguese and Spanish, many adjectives have a common form for both masculine and feminine, while others vary by gender and number. That's so difficult with this part of speech!
Now you can tell all about the adjective. Of course, we did not consider all the characteristics of this part of speech, but affected only the main features. But for the overall development of this is quite enough.