Adjectives and adjective phrases

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You've made it through the two main lexical categories, nouns and verbs. Now it's time to look at adjectives.

Before we start, I think it's useful to restate that these characteristics are often related to teaching points. For example, the issue of nouns being countable is actually an issue that causes a great deal of confusion for students.

So, with that said...

1. Adjective typically denote properties or characteristics, but not objects or actions.
2. Adjectives always head an adjective phrase.
3. Adjective phrases modify nouns and adjectives, but not verbs.
4. Any phrase that can function as complement to be, become, and seem is an adjective phrase.
5. Any word that can be modified by very, too, and so is an adjective (or an adverb).
6. Many adjectives can take -er and -est endings, but so can many adverbs.
7. Many adjectives can be gradable with less and least, so can many adverbs.
8. Many adjectives can take an -ly ending and become an adverbs.

Here are some examples.

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