Lesson 2
ADJECTIVES

Objective : Upon completion of this lesson, you will:

• Be able to describe and explain the purpose of adjectives.
• Identify all adjectives in a given sentence

ADJECTIVES

Sentences like “The soldiers fought a battle” are fairly bland and uninformative. How much better does this sentence sound: “The tired, outnumbered Roman soldiers fought a valiant, yet unsuccessful battle”? Which one gives you more information? Which one gives you a clearer picture of what actually happened? This is the difference that adjectives make in your sentences.

There are many different kinds of adjectives that serve many different purposes. However, all adjectives modify or describe nouns, pronouns, or noun equivalents. Adjectives also answer the following questions in a sentence: what kind, how many, whose, which one, and what number in a series. They also compare things, redefine the subject in the predicate, and ask questions. A word is only an adjective when it modifies or describes, not when it names something or someone, or replaces a noun. However, adjectives, like nouns, can be compound. The primary categories of adjectives are: attributive, numerative, possessive, demonstrative, comparative, superlative, and interrogative.