Universidade Católica de Moçambique

Instituto de Educação à Distância

Adjectives and nouns

Fátima Mujage Muturua, código: 708221760

Nampula, October, 2022

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Universidade Católica de Moçambique

Instituto de Educação à Distância

Adjectives and nouns

Fátima Mujage Muturua, código: 708221760

Evaluative work of the English sunject,

degree course in teaching Portuguese.
hybrid regime, class:W, 1st year, 2nd
semester taught by the teacher:

Tutor: Anselmo A. Manuel Age Selege 

Nampula, October, 2022

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Index

I. Introduction.............................................................................................................................4

1.1. General objective of that work:....................................................................................4

1.2. Specific work objectives:.............................................................................................4

1.3. Methodology:...................................................................................................................4

II. ADJECTIVES AND NOUNS...............................................................................................5

2.1. Conceptual framework.....................................................................................................5

2.2. Eleven Types of Adjectives in English............................................................................6

2.3. Uses of adjectives.............................................................................................................7

3.4. Degrees of comparison.....................................................................................................7

2.5. Noun.................................................................................................................................8

2.6. Types of nouns.................................................................................................................9

2.7. Proper nouns vs. common nouns......................................................................................9

2.8. Nouns as objects.............................................................................................................10

2.9. Nouns as subject and object complements.....................................................................10

2.10. Plural nouns..................................................................................................................11

2.11. Possessive nouns..........................................................................................................11

III. Conclusion..........................................................................................................................12

IV. Bibliographic references....................................................................................................13

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I. Introduction

Popular scientific articles are reading materials for general readers. In the educational sense,
this kind of article “can make science more accessible to students, and so can play a useful
role in the teaching of scientific writing as well as in the teaching of science” (Parkinson &
Adendorff, 2004, p. 379). However, the scholars and researchers in the field are less
interested in it even though research articles in science have been studied since the late of
19th century (Parkinson & Adendorff, 2004). The existing research on popular science
writing are varied in focuses such as establishing an image of a science writer based on
writing models or theories (Yore, Hand, & Prain, 2002), writing stylistics in popular science
(Whelan, 2009), making visual images in popular science articles and science journalism
in terms of communicative functions and cultural meaning (Hornmoen, 2010). In this
aspecto, this work has as its theme: Adjectives and nouns.

It should be noted that the work has the fallowing structure:

I. Introduction;
II. Work development;
III. Conclusion;
IV. Bibliographic references.

1.1. General objective of that work:

 Understand adjectives and nouns.

1.2. Specific work objectives:

 Define adjectives and nouns;

 Identify how to use adjectives and nouns;
 Elaborate example sentences with adjective and nouns.

1.3. Methodology:

For the design of this work, the bibliographic review was used as methodology, in which the
consulted works will be presented at the end of work.
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II. ADJECTIVES AND NOUNS

2.1. Conceptual framework

Adjectives are words that describe the qualities or states of being of nouns: enormous,

doglike, silly, yellow, fun, fast. They can also describe the quantity of nouns: many, few,
millions, eleven.

An adjective modifies a noun” (Payne, Huddleston & Pullum, 2010, p. 31). As you know,
adjectives and nouns are different parts of speech. A noun is a word that refers to a person,
animal, thing, or idea, and an adjective describes a noun. For example, in the phrase 'a clever
boy', 'clever' is an adjective, and 'boy' is a noun. In English, some adjectives can function as
nouns. These are adjectival nouns.

Regarding Pustet (2006), “adjectives can be defined at various of the organization of

language, in particular, at the levels of morphosyntax, semantics, syntactic usage” (p.
60).

Specially, “adjectives are subject complement not only to noun phrases, but also to clauses”
which probably include finite or non-finite clauses. Adjectives can be an object complement
to clauses which mostly functions to express “the result of the process denoted by the verb by
using the verb be” (Quirk et al., 1985, p. 417). Adjectives sometimes can also be postpositive.
That is to say, three positions of adjectives are considered. As examples provided by Quirk et
al. (1985, p. 418),

 Predicative: This information is useful.

 Attributive: useful information.
 Postpositive: something useful

Quirk et al. (1985) also claim four common features of adjectives (p. 402 - 403):

1. They can freely occur in attributive function (i.e. they can pre-modify a noun,
appearing between the determiner, including zero article and the head of a noun
phrase).
Ex. an ugly painting, the round table
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2. They can freely occur in predicative function (i.e. they can function as subject
complement or object complement).
Ex. the painting is ugly. He thought the painting ugly.
3. They can be pre-modified by the intensifier very.
Ex. the children are very happy.
4. They can take comparative and superlative forms. The comparison may be by means
of inflections (-er and -est) or by the addition of the pre-modifiers more or most
(periphrastic comparison).
Ex. The children are happier now. These students are more intelligent.

From these four features of adjectives, they can be sub-divided into eleven types (Khamying,
2007). The following table demonstrates its specific types, functions, and examples.

2.2. Eleven Types of Adjectives in English

No. Types Functions Examples

1 Descriptive To attribute or qualify The rich man lives in the
Adjective people, animals, things, or big house.
places in order to describe its
features
2 Proper Adjective To modify noun in terms He employs a Chinese
of the nationality, this book.
type is originated from
Proper noun.
3 Quantitative To modify noun for He ate much rice at school
Adjective particular details in yesterday.
quantifying
4 Numeral Adjective To modify noun for 1) Cardinal Numeral
particular details in exact adjective Ex. My hand has
quantifying which is divided five fingers.
into three perspectives: 2) Ordinal Numeral
cardinal number (exact adjective Ex. I am the
quantity), ordinal number seventh son of my family.
(hierarchical number), and 3) Multiplicative adjective
multiplicative number (double
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number) Ex. Some roses are double.

5 Demonstrative To show the noun it I invited that man to come
Adjective (this, that, modifies is singular or plural in.
these, those) and whether the position of
the noun is near or far from
the person who is speaking
or writing
6 Interrogative To modify noun as a What book is he reading in
Adjective questioning form the room?
7 Possessive Adjective To express possession of a This is my table.
noun by someone or
something
8 Distributive To modify noun by dividing Every soldier is punctually
Adjective or separating into different in his place.
parts
9 Emphasizing To modify noun by Supansa is my own girl-
Adjective highlighting or emphasizing friend.
the texts
10 Exclamatory To modify noun by using What a man he is!
Adjective interjection words
11 Relative Adjective To modify noun and Give me what money you
combine sentence which are have.
related between the first and
second sentences

2.3. Uses of adjectives

Adjectives tell the reader how much or how many of something you’re talking about, which
thing you want passed to you, or which kind of something you want.

E.g. please use three white flowers in the arrangement.

Three and white are modifying flowers.

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Often, when adjectives are used together, you should separate them with a comma or
conjunction.

3.4. Degrees of comparison

Adjectives come in three forms: absolute, comparative, and superlative.

 Absolute adjectives describe something in its own right.

E.g. A cool guy; A messy desk; A mischievous cat; Garrulous squirrels.

 Comparative adjectives, unsurprisingly, make a comparison between two or more

things. For most one-syllable adjectives, the comparative is formed by adding the
suffix -er (or just -r if the adjective already ends with an e). For two-syllable
adjectives ending in -y, replace -y with -ier. For multi-syllable adjectives, add the
word more.

E.g. A cooler guy; A messier desk; A more mischievous cat; More garrulous squirrels

 Superlative adjectives indicate that something has the highest degree of the quality in
question. One-syllable adjectives become superlatives by adding the suffix -est (or
just -st for adjectives that already end in e). Two-syllable adjectives ending in -
y replace -y with -iest. Multi-syllable adjectives add the word most. When you use an
article with a superlative adjective, it will almost always be the definite article (the)
rather than a or an. Using a superlative inherently indicates that you are talking about
a specific item or items.

E.g. The coolest guy; The messiest desk; The most mischievous cat; The most

garrulous squirrels.

2.5. Noun

A word that refers to a person, place, thing, event, substance or quality. E.g. Nurse', 'cat',
'party', 'oil' and 'poverty'.

Sometimes we use a noun to describe another noun. In that case, the first noun "acts as" an
adjective. E.g. history teacher; ticket office.
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The "noun as adjective" always comes first. If you remember this, it will help you to
understand what is being talked about:

 a race horse is a horse that runs in races

 a horse race is a race for horses
 a boat race is a race for boats
 a love story is a story about love
 a war story is a story about war
 a tennis ball is a ball for playing tennis
 tennis shoes are shoes for playing tennis
 a computer exhibition is an exhibition of computers
 a bicycle shop is a shop that sells bicycles

2.6. Types of nouns

Nouns form a large proportion of English vocabulary and they come in a wide variety of
types. Nouns can name a person:

 Albert Einstein
 The president
 My mother
 A girl

Nouns can also name a place:

 Mount Vesuvius
 Disneyland
 my bedroom

Nouns can also name things, although sometimes they might be intangible things, such as
concepts, activities, or processes. Some might even be hypothetical or imaginary things.

 Shoe
 Faucet
 Freedom
 The Elder Wand
 Basketball
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2.7. Proper nouns vs. common nouns

One important distinction to be made is whether a noun is a proper noun or a common noun.
A proper noun is a specific name of a person, place, or thing, and is always capitalized.

E.g. Does Tina have much homework to do this evening?

 Tina is the name of a specific person.

I would like to visit Old Faithful.

 Old Faithful is the specific name of a geological phenomenon.

The opposite of a proper noun is a common noun, sometimes known as a generic noun. A
common noun is the generic name of an item in a class or group and is not capitalized unless
appearing at the beginning of a sentence or in a title.

E.g. the girl crossed the river.

 Girl is a common noun; we do not learn the identity of the girl by reading this
sentence, though we know the action she takes. River is also a common noun in this
sentence.

2.8. Nouns as objects

Nouns can also be objects of a verb in a sentence. An object can be either a direct object (a
noun that receives the action performed by the subject) or an indirect object (a noun that is the
recipient of a direct object).

E.g. give the books to her.

 Books is a direct object (what is being given) and her is the indirect object (who the
books are being given to).

2.9. Nouns as subject and object complements

Another type of noun use is called a subject complement. In this example, the noun teacher is
used as a subject complement.
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E.g. Mary is a teacher.

Subject complements normally follow linking verbs like to be, become, or seem. A teacher is
what Mary is.

A related usage of nouns is called an object complement.

E.g. I now pronounce you husband and wife

 Husband and wife are nouns used as object complements in this sentence. Verbs that
denote making, naming, or creating are often followed by object complements.

2.10. Plural nouns

Plural nouns, unlike collective nouns, require plural verbs. Many English plural nouns can be
formed by adding -s or -es to the singular form, although there are many exceptions.

E.g. cat - cats

These two cats are both black

Note the plural verb are.

E.g. tax-taxes

House-houses

2.11. Possessive nouns

Possessive nouns are nouns which possess something; i.e., they have something. You can
identify a possessive noun by the apostrophe; most nouns show the possessive with an
apostrophe and an s.

E.g. the cat’s toy was missing.

 The cat possesses the toy, and we denote this by use of’s at the end of cat.

When a singular noun ends in the letter s or z, the same format often applies. This is a matter
of style, however, and some style guides suggest leaving off the extra s.
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E.g. I have been invited to the boss’s house for dinner.

Mrs. Sanchez’s coat is still hanging on the back of her chair.

Plural nouns ending in s take only an apostrophe to form a possessive.

E.g. my nieces’ prom dresses were exquisite.

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III. Conclusion

We are, of course, aware that academic inquiry requires theory, abstraction, and even the
“technical jargon” of nominalization, adjectives and nouns, to avoid simply applying
“common sense” to social problems. Academic language names new concepts, approaches,
and physical entities to avoid mistaking appearance for reality. Most scientific fields are too
technical for laypeople to follow, but the social sciences would benefit enormously from a
reversal of the trends we have observed in this paper. The soft knowledge fields have a
responsibility to undermine elitism and bring ideas and knowledge arrived at in academic
work into public discussion and debate, and this involves using a language which a wide
public can engage with.
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IV. Bibliographic references

KHAMYING, A. (2007). Advanced English Grammar for high learner. Bangkok: Printing.

LAMB, E. (2016). Plausible things that cannot both be true your daily dose of number theory
weirdness.

PARKINSON, J., & ADENDORFF, R. (2004). The use of popular science in teaching
scientific literacy. English for Specific Purposes.

WHELAN, J. (2009). Communicating science to popular and academic audiences. ,. The

Journal of the European Medical Writers Association.

YORE, L., HAND, B., & PRAIN, V. (2002). Scientists as Writers. Wiley Periodicals, pp.
672-692.