Position of adjectives in sentences

1. Concepts

• Examples of adjectives describing people: tall, short, beautiful, friendly,...

• Examples of adjectives describing things: cheap, expensive, good, bad, small, big,...

2. Adjectives are in noun phrases and modify nouns

 Summary:

• In a noun phrase, the adjective comes first to modify the main noun of the noun phrase.

• If there are multiple adjectives that modify the same noun, the order of the adjectives is:

  opinion → size → quality → shape → age → color → origin → material → type → purpose

• In case two adjectives belong to the same classification, we connect the two adjectives together by word and.

Position of adjectives in noun phrases:

• In a noun phrase, the adjective comes first to modify the main noun of the noun phrase.

• More specifically, in a noun phrase, the adjective must come after all determiners and before the noun that modifies the noun.

For example:

• Today is a very special day.

• The adjective special comes after the determiner a and after adverbs very, to modify nouns day.

• Those two tall high school students play basketball every day.

• Adjective tall comes after the determiner those and two and comes before nouns high school modifies nouns students.

Those two tall high school students play basketball every day.

Many adjectives modify the same noun

There can be many adjectives that modify the same noun at the same time:

• a pretty tall thin young black-haired English woman = a dark-haired, thin, tall, pretty English woman

• two long red plastic cooking spoons

• a round Italian bread-like cake

• If there are several adjectives modifying a noun, the order of the adjectives is:

Opinion

Size

Quality

Shape

Year old

Color

Origin

Material

Type

Purpose

For example:

Opinion	Size	Quality	Shape	Year old	Color	Origin	Material	Type	Purpose
Pretty	Tall	Thin		Young	Black- haired	English
	Long				Red		Plastic		Cooking
			Round			Italian		Bread- like

In cases where two adjectives belong to the same category (e.g. describe the same color), we join the two adjectives together with the word and:

• an old green and white T-shirt

3. Adjectives come after TO BE or linking verbs

or to be and the linking verb (see, look, feel, taste, remain, become, sound,...), we use adjectives.

For example:

• Her English is very good.

• Train fares remain unchanged.

• She was becoming confused.

4. Adjectives modify indefinite pronouns

We use adjectives stand behind indefinite pronoun to modify that indefinite pronoun

• We hope to prevent anything unpleasant from happening.

• The doctor said there was nothing wrong with me.

• She wanted to go somewhere nice.

The doctor said there was nothing wrong with me

Common indefinite pronouns are:

	People	Object	Place
some- (-some)	someone somebody	something	somewhere
any- (any-)	anyone anybody	anything	anywhere
no- (without-)	no one nobody	nothing	nowhere
every- (mỗi-)	everyone everybody	everything

5. Other structures

We also use adjectives in the following structures:

MAKE + object + adjective

• I just want to make her happy.

  I just want to make her happy.

• That made me really sad.

  That makes me so sad.

FIND + object + adjective

• We find the phone very easy to use.

  We felt this phone was very easy to use.

• You may find it hard to accept your illness.

  You find it difficult to accept your illness.

6. Position of adjectives relative to nouns in a noun phrase

Summary

In some cases, the adjective comes after the noun to be modified:

• When it is an adjective phrase that is too long, putting it before a noun will lead to confusion.

• Some adjectives ending in are -able/-ible can come before or after the noun it modifies

In most cases, When an adjective modifies a noun, it will come before that noun. We have seen this rule through the examples of section 2:

• a very special day →special stand before day

• those two tall high school students → tall stand before students

However, we can see some cases adjective comes after the noun need modification. Those "exceptions" are:

• When it is an adjective phrase that is too long, putting it before a noun will lead to confusion.

For example:

• We need a box bigger than that.

  If you say "We need a bigger than that box" will be confusing.

• He showed me a book full of errors

  If you say "He showed me a full of errors book" will be confusing.

Some adjectives ending in are -able/-ible can come before or after the noun it modifies. For example:

• It is the only solution possible.

  That is the only possible solution.

• She asked me to book all the tickets available.

She asked me to book all the tickets I could buy.

Actually, the "exceptions" above are shortened forms of relative clauses.However, this is a fairly advanced topic so we don't need to study it thoroughly in this lesson. You just need to note that these "exceptional" cases exist!

• We need a box bigger than that.

• He showed me a book full of errors.

• It is the only solution possible.

• She asked me to book all the tickets available.