Adjectives are divided into three categories: qualitative, possessive and relative. They all fulfill the role of definition in a sentence. They also have inconsistent characters, which are necessarily indicated during morphological analysis: number, gender and case.
Material of manufacture, spatial or temporal features, attitude to any community indicate relative adjectives. Examples: banana paradise (material), southwest wind (space), yesterday's bread (time), folk voice (community).
These signs are not considered from a quantitative point of view, therefore, they do not exist and the degree of comparison. A banana palm cannot be “banana” or, even less so, “very banana” or “banana itself”!
Relative adjectives from nouns are formed. For example: pistachios - pistachio, oilcloth - oilcloth, autumn - autumn, one hand - one-armed. But sometimes, in the process of substantiation, they go into the category of nouns: a military man - a military man, a Russian man - Russian, a bathroom - a bathtub, a children's room - a nursery. However, even in this case they are inclined by the principle of adjectives.
It should be noted that relative adjectives cannot form short forms. “Wooden” from “wooden”, “plums” from “plum”, “village” from “village” - these words can exist only in the speech of a joker who decides to “play” with his tongue, distorting it.
Relative adjectives do not combine with adverbs, including the word "very." Everyone will agree that the phrases “very pistachio”, “very doggy” or “too windowy” sound ridiculous and even funny.
Today, many comedians successfully “beat” these features of Russian speech, inventing phrases like: “No, my fate - it will be more abundant than yours!” or "Well, a very Russian man! The most Russian of all the Russians! ”
Another distinguishing feature possessed by relative adjectives is the absence of antonyms. And what antonyms (words with the opposite meaning) can the words “cat” or “table”, “electric” or “January” have?
If someone picks up the adjective “feline” antonym “doggy”, then this can only be counted as a funny but unsuccessful joke. After all, both dogs and cats are just animals that sometimes quarrel. But their quarrels are not the law at all, therefore these adjectives cannot be called antonyms. It is also impossible to define the antonym “June” or “May” as an adjective “January”; it is also foolish to try to call the words “wooden” and “iron” the antonyms.
It should be noted such a feature of the Russian language as the mobility of the boundaries between lexical and grammatical categories of adjectives. That is, relative adjectives can in a certain context turn into possessive or qualitative.
An example is the word canine. In combination with the noun “collection”, it remains in the category of relative adjectives, with the word “ears” it is already becoming possessive, and the phrase “dog life” perfectly indicates the quality of this very life ...
Here are the main distinguishing features of this category of adjectives.