Welcome to English grammar spot. This lesson is about
adjectives. Take a look
at these sentences: She's a beautiful singer
He became poor after the war. Both the underlined words are
what we call it adjectives. In this lesson
I'm going to show you what adjectives exactly are. I'm going to explain something
about the construction, which we call
the + adjective and I'm going to take you through some common
confusables. What are adjectives?
Adjectives give information about
a noun or a pronoun so a noun can be dog, cat
and a pronoun can be
he, she, it, him, her etc.
This information can either be
one word or an entire
clause or phrase. And a clause or a phrase is
a part of a sentenc.e For example he's
talented. Talented says something about the pronoun he.
My trousers are white.
White says something about my trousers
my trousers here being a noun.
My aunt, who is quite old, came to vist us.
here the underlines who is quite old
can also be concerned as an adjective,
because it says something extra about
my aunt. Here it is
a clause and we call it
a relative clause here. Now where do we place adjectives?
We place adjectives generally before a noun.
For example: He's a talented football player.
My right leg is broken.
Leg is the noun, right is the adjective.
We place the adjective after a verb
when it is part of a predicate and predicate
are all the verbs in a sentence.
For example: This building can never be old.
Old obviuosly says something about the building,
but because we have a predicate here so
several verbs and it is part of the predicate,
we put it at the end sentence. Now let's take a look
at the + adjective structure.
When describing a certain group
the 'the + adjective' construction is used. For example:
The English eat a hearty breakfast.
Or the rich get richer every year, while the poor get poorer.
So we use this for an entire group so this could also be
the French, the Dutch, the Thai
the Chinese, the Brazilians, for example.
Now let's take a look at some common confusables.
For instance the word poor. He is a poor boy.
so this means he has no money but Her hearing is poor
This means she can't hear very well.
Also the word 'small':
Their farm is small says something about the size but they are small farmers
this does not mean that there's very little people
but it says something about their farm
occupation so they probably have a small piece of land which they work on
also the word mean. He's mean with his money
obviously means that he doesn't like to spend his money
but he's a mean man means that he's not kind.
I thank you for your attention
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