Adjectivals
By Mark Canada
English professor, University of North Carolina at Pembroke
Take a close look at any sentence, and there's a good chance you will find an adjectival--a
word or phrase that modifies a noun. Indeed, the sentence that you just read contains five
adjectivals: close, any,good, a word or phrase that modifies a noun, and that modifies a
noun. The first three are adjectives, words that can modify nouns all by
themselves. English has thousands of such words, including some of the most common
words in the language: big, little, bad, red, right, and so on. The last two adjectivals are
both examples of a phrase, a group of words acting together to serve some purpose in a
sentence. Specifically, the first of these two phrases--a word or phrase that modifies a
noun--is an appositive, and the second--that modifies a noun--is a relative
clause. English has several other adjectivals, as well. The following sentences illustrate
the various types of adjectivals, which appear in red:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Adjectives: Dorothy's red shoes are really nice.
Appositive: My friend Brian lives in New Jersey.
Infinitive: He is sticking to his resolution to stay fit.
Noun: Stay off of my blue suede shoes.
Prepositional Phrases: Her reason for coming is out of line.
Participles: The professor teaching Victorian literature is interesting.
Relative Clause: I know a biologist who lives in the desert.
While all of these words and phrases can be adjectivals, they also can serve other
functions in a sentence. Infinitives, prepositional phrases, nouns, and participles, for
example, all can function as adverbials. To determine whether a word or phrase is an
adjectival, decide whether it modifies a noun. If it does, it is an adjectival.
Notice in the examples above that adjectivals generally appear in one of three places-immediately before the nouns they modify, immediately after the nouns they modify, or
after a linking verb such as "to be." In other words, unlike adverbials, which are very
movable, adjectivals tend to stay close to the words they modify, except when they are
being linked back to the subject.
Yet another type of adjectival is the compound adjectival--a series of words that appear
before a noun and work together to modify that noun in the same way a single adjective
would. Except when the first word is an adverb ending in -ly, these adjectivals generally
are hyphenated. The following sentences contain compound adjectivals, marked in red:
1. Compound Adjectivals: The empty-nest couple moved into a high-rise building.
2. Compound Adjectivals: The plain-spoken man bristled at his opponent's in-yourface politics.
3. Compound Adjectival: No one could bear to look at the wrongly accused man.
Because of their ability to package a lot of information, adjectivals are one of the most
useful components of English grammar. Indeed, mastering them can improve your
rhetorical skills. For example, if you tend to write a lot of short sentences, you might
want to try packaging the information in some of these sentences in the form of
adjectivals and then inserting these new adjectivals into other sentences. One of the
exercises below can help you practice this strategy.
For all of their benefits, adjectivals also cause problems for some English speakers and
writers. In particular, people often have trouble punctuating relative clauses and making
verbs agree with subjects when these subjects contain certain kinds of adjectivals. The
exercises below will help you work combat these problems, as well.
Exercises
General Practice
Identifying Adjectivals: Identify all of the adjectivals in the following sentences and
label each as an adjective, infinitive, noun, participle, prepositional phrase, relative clause,
or compound adjectival.
1. The really tall building on the corner belongs to an interesting family with a long
history in this area.
2. To succeed in the most challenging college courses, most students need to study
hard.
3. The district court judge ruled the shouting woman out of order.
4. The commercial that you saw suggests that the going-out-of-business sale will
end in a few days.
5. Their youngest daughter, who just graduated from high school, has been studying
ways to choose a college.
Rhetoric and Literature
Combining Sentences: While an occasional short sentence can emphasize a point or
shake up the rhythm in a piece of prose, longer sentences tend to be more rhetorically
effective. One of the most useful ways to lengthen sentences that are too short is to
package information in adjectivals. Read each of the following groups of sentences. Use
what you have learned about adjectivals to convey all of the same information in a single
sentence. Finally label each adjectival in your sentence.
1. Example: Edgar Allan Poe was an orphan. He was raised by foster parents. He
wrote poems and stories. Many featured characters who lost loved ones. An
orphan who was raised by foster parents, Edgar Allan Poe wrote many poems and
stories featuring characters who lost loved ones.
o
o
o
o
o
o
foster (adjective)
An orphan (appositive)
who was raised by foster parents (relative clause)
many (adjective)
featuring characters (participial phrase)
loved (participle)
2. Some writers have trouble with relative clauses. These clauses begin with relative
pronouns. They modify nouns.
3. The actress was struggling. She had a plan. She wanted to make her name in
musicals. The plan failed.
4. Annie Jump Cannon earned a degree from Wellesley College. She became an
astronomer. Her expertise was in the area of classifying stars. She was successful.