Classification of Adjectives in English Grammar

An adjective is a part of speech that modifies, describes and quantifies a noun or pronoun in the sentence. Apart from one word, a cluster of words with a subject and a verb also acts as an adjective. In this case, the cluster of words is considered an adjective clause. An adjective is classified into five parts, which includes:

•    Possessive adjective

•    Descriptive adjective

•    Adjective of quantity or numeral adjective

•    Demonstrative adjective

•    Interrogative adjective

Let us understand the different types of adjectives in detail.

1.  Possessive Adjective: a possessive adjective shows possession of a noun by something or someone. It is quite similar to possessive pronoun. ‘His’, ‘her’, ‘my’, ‘our’, ‘your’, ‘their’ and ‘its’ are possessive adjective.

For example:

•    Your mobile phone is lying on the table.

•    Her husband is standing outside.

2.  Descriptive Adjective: A descriptive adjective describes the quality or the type of noun or pronoun.

For example:

•    Sherry is a beautiful girl.

•    Rock is very tall.

3.   Adjective of Quantity or Numeral Adjective: A numeral adjective expresses the number of nouns. This type of adjective is also known as an adjective of quantity, which answers the questions like ‘how many’ or ‘how much’?

For example:

•    Twenty pilgrims injured in a bus accident.

•    She needs more money.

4.  Demonstrative Adjective: This form of the adjective is mainly used to point out nouns or pronouns. A demonstrative adjective always come before the word they are describing. ‘These’, ‘this’, ‘those’ and ‘that’ are demonstrative adjective.

For example:

•    I always prefer to wear this type of dress.

•    That girl is cute.

5.  Interrogative Adjective: Interrogative adjective is used for interrogation. In simple words, it is used to ask questions like ‘what’, ‘where’, ‘which’, etc.

For example:

•    What are you cooking today?

•    Which place would you like visit? 

How to Identify Parts of Speech in a Paragraph

In English grammar, parts of speech are considered the base of all types writing and reading. Parts of speech are groups of words that own similar grammatical properties. According to the English grammar, these are categorized into eight parts, which includes noun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, pronoun, conjunction and interjection.

The parts of speech help us in recognizing how a word is used in a sentence. Sometimes, the same word acts as a noun in one sentence and an adjective or verb in another sentence. For example, ‘All types of books are available in the library’ (Here, the ‘books’ is the noun). Let see another sentence, ‘Joe stand in a queue to book the movie ticket’. (Here, ‘book’ is a verb)

It is essential for students to understand how to identify parts of speech in a sentence or paragraph. This will enable them to comprehend what they read. Understanding the correct use of each part of speech will also help students to write meaningful and correct sentences. Let us see how to determine each part of speech in the paragraph.

1.   Noun: A noun can be a person, idea, place or thing. Generally, a noun acts as the subject of the sentence and also acts as a direct and indirect object. For example, ‘Sam’, ‘James’, ‘Africa’, ‘Japan’, ‘Window’, ‘Chair’ and ‘Goodness’ are nouns. A noun can be singular and plural and will be present in every sentence.

2.  Adjective: The role of adjectives is to describe and modify the nouns and pronouns in the sentence. It gives answers to the questions like ‘what kind’, ‘how many’, or ‘which one’. For instance, ‘beautiful’, ‘expressionless’, ‘Russian’, ‘American’, ‘bigger’, ‘blue-eyed’, ‘well behaved’, ‘polite’, etc. are adjectives.

3.  Verb: A verb expresses some kind of action, happening or state of being. The action or occurrence can be described in different tenses including past, present and future. For example, ‘run’, ‘hear’, ‘dance’, ‘write’, ‘drive’, etc.

4.  Adverb: Adverbs are those words that modify verbs, adjectives and other adverbs. For example, ‘quickly’, ‘slowly’, ‘loudly’, ‘unfortunately’, ‘angrily’, ‘happily’ and ‘gracefully’ are adverb.

5.  Preposition: The role of preposition is to join a noun, pronoun or noun phrase to other part of the sentence. In simple words, it explains a relationship between other words in a sentence. For instance, ‘under’, ‘next to’, ‘over’, ‘into’, ‘across’, ‘in’, ‘at’ and ‘with’, etc. are prepositions.

6. Conjunction: Conjunctions are those words that link other word, phrase and clauses in a sentence. For instance, ‘but’, ‘so’, ‘for’, ‘nor’, ‘or’, etc.

7.  Pronoun: Pronouns are those words that replace nouns or take the place of nouns in a sentence. For example, ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘I’, ‘few’, ‘many’, ‘everyone’, ‘someone’ and ‘everybody’ are pronouns.

8.  Interjection: Interjections in a sentence are the words that make an exclamation. For instance, ‘wow’, ‘what’, ‘oh’, ‘hey’, ‘ouch’, etc.

What are Adjectives

Adjectives are the words that describe nouns in a better way. An adjective is word that explains a thing or a person by giving its information, including size, color, behavior, age, shape, etc. Besides, adjectives modify noun so as to make the sentence more clear and concise for readers.

For example:

•    Long necked dinosaurs
•    Cheetah is the fastest animal
•    A blue eyed girl
•    A round shaped dining table
•    A square shaped storage box

Types of Adjectives

Adjectives are categorized into 5 different types that are as follows:

1.    Adjective of quality: This type of adjective is basically used to describe the characteristic of a noun. Large, big, beautiful, charming, sincere, honest, sober, kind, heavy, skinny are words that are used as adjectives in a sentence to explain a noun.

For example:

•    Nancy is a kindhearted person.
•    New York is a popular city.
•    Elephant is a large animal.

2.    Adjective of quantity: This type of adjective is used to describe the quantity of the noun or pronoun. It does not give you the exact figure, but it explains the amount of a noun in relative or whole terms. Few, many, little, sufficient, half, etc. are the words that are used as adjectives to show the amount of a noun or pronoun.

For example:

•    Many people came to Washington to see the cherry blossom.
•    They have completed half of the distance of Virginia.
•    Few people participated in the Boston Marathon.

3.    Adjective of number: This type of adjective is used in a sentence to show the number of nouns and their place in an order. It is categorized into three different parts:-

a)    Definite numeral adjective: It shows the accurate number of nouns or the order of the nouns. For example, one, two, three, four, etc. are cardinals, whereas first, second, third, fourth, etc. are ordinals.
b)    Indefinite numeral adjective: It gives a basic idea of the amount rather than showing the exact amount. For example, many, some, few, all, several, etc.
c)    Distributive numeral adjective: It is an adjective that is used to describe individual nouns within the whole amount. For example, each, another, other, neither, either, etc.

For example:

•    I have purchased twelve eggs. (Definite numeral adjective)
•    I have booked all the tickets available. (Indefinite numeral adjective)
•    Every citizen needs to follow the traffic rules (Distributive numeral adjective)

4.    Demonstrative adjective: This type of adjective is used to indicate a particular noun or pronoun. This, these, those, that words are used as adjectives to point out a noun.

For example:

•    I love those flowers.
•    That laptop belongs to Sherry.
•    This book is useful for test preparation.
 
5.    Interrogative adjective: This type of adjective is used to ask questions about nouns as well as in relation to nouns. Where, which, what, why, whose are interrogative adjectives.

For example:

•    What type of dress is it?
•    Whose child is crying?
•    Which is the shortest way?