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Adjectives The term adjective can be used broadly for any word that modifies a noun. In this book, however, we will divide all noun modifiers into three smaller groups and address each group in a separate chapter. In this chapter we will cover what we will call “true” adjectives. In Chapter 3 we will cover articles, and in Chapter 4 we will cover all post-noun modifiers, modifiers that follow the nouns they modify.
“True” adjectives True adjectives have three distinctive features: 1. They immediately precede the nouns that they modify. 2. They have comparative and superlative forms. 3. They can be used as predicate adjectives. To see the difference between a true adjective and another common type of noun modifier, let us compare the true adjective slow and the article the. Both slow and the are adjectives in the broad sense because they both modify nouns. For example, they modify the noun cars in the following sentences: Slow cars should stay in the right lane. The cars in the left lane passed me. However, as a true adjective, slow has three characteristics that the does not have:
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