What is an adjective? Adjective as part of speech

Surely all students know what an adjective is. But many adults, most likely, find it difficult to answer this question. Over time, even elementary things are forgotten. In which classes of the school is the adjective studied in detail? 4 class, 5 th, 6 th ... How it was a long time! We suggest to return to distant years and refresh your memory.

Self-contained part of speech

The adjective in Russian answers the questions "which", "which", "which", "which", "whose", "whose", "whose", "whose" and denotes the feature of the subject. It changes according to numbers, births, cases, can have a short form. Most often it is a definition in sentences, but it can also be in the role of a predicate.

Ranks

Adjective as part of speech has only one unchanging morphological sign - it is a discharge. Highlight the qualitative, possessive, relative language units. Let's talk about each rank in more detail.

Qualitative adjectives

The words of this category answer the questions "what", "what", "what", "what" and what signify that sign which can be less or more. Qualitative adjectives, as a rule, are well combined with adverbs "too", "very" and their synonyms, for example, too beautiful, very large, extremely clever.

From such words through repetition it is possible to form a complex adjective, for example, large-large, tasty-tasty. You can also attach a prefix to the word "not" and get a single root adjective, for example, ugly, not stupid. Usually qualitative structural language units have antonyms (high - low), and in some cases also hyperonimals (large - huge). It should be noted that not all words meet the listed characteristics, there are also those that do not satisfy these characteristics.

Forms of words

The peculiarity of qualitative adjectives is that many of them have a full and short form, for example, smart - smart, delicious - tasty. In this case, the short form does not bend at all, but the full one inclines in cases, gender, numbers. Often in sentences, short adjectives serve as a predicate, and complete ones are a definition. Some words do not have a brief form, for example, a lovable, friendly, while others do not have a complete, for example, much, need, should, glad.

Degrees of comparison

The story of what an adjective is, will not be complete unless you include such a characteristic of this part of speech as the degree of comparison. The attribute is inherent only in qualitative language units. There are three degrees of comparison:

1) positive, indicating that the object or group of objects have some kind of sign, for example, a beautiful flower;

2) comparative, indicating that one or another feature in one object or group of objects is more significant than in the other (others), for example, a wolf is more than a hare, or in the same object (same subjects), but already in Other time, for example, in the future I will be smarter;

3) excellent, indicating that an object or set of objects have some indication more than all other items from the same group, for example, the best doctor in the hospital, the strongest player in the team.

To form an adjective in a comparative degree can be by using additional words, for example: the most beautiful, the taller. In this case, a part of speech acquires a composite, or, as they say, analytic form. When the degree of comparison is expressed by only one word, the form is called simple, or synthetic. It should be emphasized that not all adjectives may have a comparative and superlative degree. Words that are not qualitative in quality, such characteristics are not inherent.

Relative adjectives

These are linguistic units that answer the questions of "whose", "whose" "whose", "whose" and "sign", which signify to a lesser or greater degree can not be. They express the attitude of the object to another object (doorbell), to the property (washing powder), to the material (glass vase), to the place (Moscow yard), to the time (October day), to the unit of measurement (three-story house, seven-year-old child, Kilogram package) and so on. Such adjectives are not combined with the adverbs "too", "very" and their synonyms, they do not have a short form, degrees of comparison. They also do not have antonyms.

Possessive adjectives

These words answer the questions of "whose", "whose" "whose", "whose", and denote the belonging of a particular object to a person or a living creature, for example, sisters, father, fox. These language units, just like in the previous case, do not have degrees of comparison, antonyms, short form, do not combine with the adverbs "too", "very" and their synonyms.

Borders of digits

Narrative of what an adjective is, it is worth noting one feature. The fact is that the lexico-grammatical boundaries of the words of this part of speech are very mobile, so sometimes it is difficult to correctly determine the discharge. So, possessive, relative adjectives can easily take a qualitative value. For example, in the phrase "dog paw" the word "doggy" will be a possessive adjective, in the phrase "dog pack" - relative, and in the phrase "dog life" - quality.

Types of declination

Words related to the part of speech that we are considering can be inclined by case, number, and in the singular by birth. This does not apply to comparative adjectives and short adjectives that do not bow. There are still a certain number of indeclinable words, for example, jackets beige.

The case, number, genus of adjectives depend on the same characteristics of the nouns with which they agree. Depending on the basis, there are three variants of declination:

• Solid: white, white, white ;
• Mild: winter, winter, winter;
• Mixed: bad, bad, bad.

Word formation

Adjective as part of speech can be formed in different ways:

• Consort: joyful - unhappy;
• Suffix: swamp - marsh;
• Pristavochno-suffix: the ground is underground;
• The composition of two bases: three colors - three colors, pale and pink - pale pink;
• Complex suffix: linen + seed + cleaning - flax seed.

Morphological analysis

At school in Russian language lessons, teachers quite often give children the task of making a morphological analysis of a word related to one or another part of speech. How to make an analysis of the adjective? To do this, you need to determine the following characteristics of the language unit:

1. Grammatical significance.
2. The initial form, that is, the form of the masculine gender, nominative case, singular. For example, the adjective "bad" initial form will be the word "good".
3. Constant signs. As you remember, there is only one sign - a category. The adjective "bad" is qualitative.
4. Unstable features: form (short / complete), degree of comparison (comparative / positive / excellent), gender, case, number. The first two characteristics (form and degree of comparison) are characteristic only of qualitative adjectives. For example, the analysis of our word "bad" will look like this: used in its full form, positive degree of comparison, genitive, masculine, singular.
5. Syntactic role: predicate or definition. In our case, the adjective "bad" is a definition.

Transition to other parts of speech

Adjectives often pass into the category of adjectives. For example, a musician from him no. In turn, adjectives are able to substantiate into the category of nouns, for example, military, Russian.

Features of this part of speech in other languages

We hope, thanks to the article, you managed to remember what an adjective is. It is worth saying that not all characteristics inherent in this part of speech in Russian will take place in other linguistic systems. For example, adjectives in English by numbers and cases do not change, in French - by case also do not decline, but vary in numbers. In Japanese, adjectives are generally immutable, they have times and define the politeness of speech. In Portuguese and Spanish, many adjectives have a common form for both masculine and feminine gender, while others vary in gender and number. It's so difficult with this part of the speech!

Now you can tell everything about the adjective. Of course, we did not consider all the characteristics of this part of the speech, but only touched upon the main features. But for a general development this is quite enough.