A.

Adjective
In grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a noun or
pronoun, giving more information about the noun or pronoun's referent. Some examples
can be seen in the box to the right. Collectively, adjectives form one of the traditional
English eight parts of speech, though linguists today distinguish adjectives from words
such as determiners that also used to be considered adjectives.

Not all languages have adjectives, but most, including English, do. (English adjectives
include big, old, and tired, among many others.) Those that do not, typically use words of
another part of speech, often verbs, to serve the same semantic function; for example,
such a language might have a verb that means "to be big", and would use a construction
analogous to "big-being house" to express what English expresses as "big house". Even
in languages that do have adjectives, one language's adjective might not be another's;
for example, while English uses "to be hungry" (hungry being an adjective), French uses
"avoir faim" (literally "to have hunger"), and where Hebrew uses the adjective "‫"זקוק‬
(zaqūq, roughly "in need of"), English uses the verb "to need".

Examples:
 That is a tall building.
 I met a very old man.

 His voice was hoarse like that of a bullfrog.

 The quick, brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

 That's a very nice dress you are wearing.

Adjectives and adverbs

Many languages, including English, distinguish between adjectives, which modify nouns
and pronouns, and adverbs, which modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs. Not all
languages have exactly this distinction, however, and in many languages (including
English) there are words that can function as both. For example, English fast is an
adjective in "a fast car" (where it modifies the noun car), but an adverb in "he drove fast"
(where it modifies the verb drove).

Determiners
Linguists today distinguish determiners from adjectives, considering them to be two
separate parts of speech (or lexical categories), but traditionally, determiners were
considered adjectives in some of their uses. (In English dictionaries, which typically still
do not treat determiners as their own part of speech, determiners are often recognizable
by being listed both as adjectives and as pronouns.) Determiners are words that express
the reference of a noun in the context, generally indicating definiteness (as in a vs. the),
quantity (as in one vs. some vs. many), or another such property.
Attributive, predicative, absolute, and substantive
adjectives
A given occurrence of an adjective can generally be classified into one of four kinds of
uses:

 Attributive adjectives are part of the noun phrase headed by the noun they
modify; for example, happy is an attributive adjective in "happy people". In some
languages, attributive adjectives precede their nouns; in others, they follow their
nouns; and in yet others, it depends on the adjective, or on the exact relationship
of the adjective to the noun. In English, attributive adjectives usually precede
their nouns in simple phrases, but often follow their nouns when the adjective is
modified or qualified by a phrase acting as an adverb. For example: "I saw three
happy kids", and "I saw three kids happy enough to jump up and down with glee."
 Predicative adjectives are linked via a copula or other linking mechanism to the
noun or pronoun they modify; for example, happy is a predicate adjective in "they
are happy" and in "that made me happy." (See also: Predicative (adjectival or
nominal), Subject complement.)

 Absolute adjectives do not belong to a larger construction (aside from a larger

adjective phrase), and typically modify either the subject of a sentence or
whatever noun or pronoun they are closest to; for example, happy is an absolute
adjective in "The boy, happy with his lollipop, did not look where he was going."

 Substantive adjectives act almost as nouns. One way this can happen is if a
noun is elided and an attributive adjective is left behind. In the sentence, "I read
two books to them; he preferred the sad book, but she preferred the happy",
happy is a substantive adjective, short for "happy one" or "happy book". Another
way this can happen is in phrases like "out with the old, in with the new", where
"the old" means, "that which is old" or "all that is old", and similarly with "the
new". In such cases, the adjective functions either as a mass noun (as in the
preceding example) or as a plural count noun, as in "The meek shall inherit the
Earth", where "the meek" means "those who are meek" or "all who are meek".

Adjectival phrases
An adjective acts as the head of an adjectival phrase. In the simplest case, an adjectival
phrase consists solely of the adjective; more complex adjectival phrases may contain
one or more adverbs modifying the adjective ("very strong"), or one or more
complements (such as "worth several dollars", "full of toys", or "eager to please"). In
English, attributive adjectival phrases that include complements typically follow their
subject ("an evildoer devoid of redeeming qualities").

Other noun modifiers

In many languages, including English, it is possible for nouns to modify other nouns.
Unlike adjectives, nouns acting as modifiers (called attributive nouns or noun adjuncts)
are not predicative; a beautiful park is beautiful, but a car park is not "car". In English,
the modifier often indicates origin ("Virginia reel"), purpose ("work clothes"), or semantic
patient ("man eater"). However, it can generally indicate almost any semantic
relationship. It is also common for adjectives to be derived from nouns, as in English
boyish, birdlike, behavioral, famous, manly, angelic, and so on.

Many languages have special verbal forms called participles that can act as noun
modifiers. In some languages, including English, there is a strong tendency for
participles to evolve into adjectives. English examples of this include relieved (the past
participle of the verb relieve, used as an adjective in sentences (such as "I am so
relieved to see you"), spoken (as in "the spoken word"), and going (the present participle
of the verb go, used as an adjective in sentences such as "Ten dollars per hour is the
going rate").

Other constructs that often modify nouns include prepositional phrases (as in English "a
rebel without a cause"), relative clauses (as in English "the man who wasn't there"),
other adjective clauses (as in English "the bookstore where he worked"), and infinitive
phrases (as in English "cake to die for").

In relation, many nouns take complements such as content clauses (as in English "the
idea that I would do that"); these are not commonly considered modifiers, however.

Comparison of adjectives
In many languages, adjectives can be compared. In English, for example, we can say
that a car is big, that it is bigger than another is, or that it is the biggest car of all. Not all
adjectives lend themselves to comparison, however; for example, the English adjective
extinct is not considered comparable, in that it does not make sense to describe one
species as "more extinct" than another. However, even most non-comparable English
adjectives are still sometimes compared; for example, one might say that a language
about which nothing is known is "more extinct" than a well-documented language with
surviving literature but no speakers.

Comparable adjectives are also known as "gradable" adjectives, because they tend to
allow grading adverbs such as very, rather, and so on.

Among languages that allow adjectives to be compared in this way, different approaches
are used. Indeed, even within English, two different approaches are used: the suffixes
-er and -est, and the words more and most. (In English, the general tendency is for
shorter adjectives and adjectives from Anglo-Saxon to use -er and -est, and for longer
adjectives and adjectives from French, Latin, Greek, and other languages to use more
and most.) By either approach, English adjectives therefore have positive forms (big),
comparative forms (bigger), and superlative forms (biggest). However, many other
languages do not distinguish comparative from superlative forms.