The adjective delimits (or limits) the noun or varies its meaning. A simple
denotation can be deepened or changed or confined by an adjective. We can grasp everything - from concepts to images - considerably or unmistakeably
through the adjective.
Personally, the adjective helps me enchant my readers to slope
into my imaginings, my ideas. It builds a tone for them, it generates a frame of
mind, and it shows rigidity. It enlivens my writing to them, translating an
experience or idea into written words that let them visualise the situation.
The art of playing with the most fitting adjectives is the
key for making a writing work well with the reader, I believe. Using a wide
array of adjectives in a writing is indeed effective in the sense that it does
not only drive away the readers’ encumbrance but also kindles their curiosity, to scour the whole texts for clues, for its drift.
That’s why as a writing teacher, when I teach sentence
stylistics, my efforts are centred on the adjective – essentially, on the noun phrase,
whose other component is the adjective. A writing can be well organised for one
thing but can be rather dull without the sense of balance in the noun phrase.
The adjective colours a writing and divulges the true nature of the writer. It gives anything we say some kind of configuration and piquancy and impression. It spices a writing up quite a bit or further, or somewhat. It calibrates the abstracts and feelings by helping the noun to be more perceptible and discernible.
I’ve pored through the volumes of documents – novels, poetry
books, journals, dictionaries, grammars – to get my hands on the adjective sequence,
something that is widely held and shared. Demonstrably, I’ve incorporated it in
a grammar I wrote in 2009, in APPLE [A
Plain & Practically Lucid English] Grammar (CentralBooks). One thing I've wanted is to simplify the difficult task of teaching writing to beginners or foreign students. The sequence logical or practical as it may appear gives the noun phrase an element of structure, and that is important to a learner who is following a broad trail of dubiety and unfamiliarity, the trail where he seems to scrabble for ideas or methods. For one, a learner needs a thoughtful, penetrating mind, which he doesn't have yet, on the whole. A beginner learner in English might feel quite peculiar for the strangeness of language not their own.
Indeed, I have come up with something to follow. Here is the list, a catalogue of a series, in turn; then a catalogue of examples – a sort
of vade mecum for beginning writers:
(1) determiner-a, an, the, some, many, much, little, a
little, a few, few, one, two, three, ten, fifty, this, these, that, those,
first, second, third, my, his, her, their, our, your, Celine’s, any, several,
every, a quantity of, a number of, a small number of
(2) opinion- amusing, anxious, beautiful, boring, comical,
confident, crazy, delicious, droll, edgy, elegant, entertaining, exciting,
fluent, funny, gorgeous, inferior, intelligent, happy, high- humorous,
interesting, low-grade, mad, mediocre, nervous, passionate, poor, pretty,
quality, rich, sad, sexy, serious, striking, stunning, substandard, tired,
tedious, ugly, uneasy, witty
(3) size-big, large, small, thin, fat, tall, short, long,
enormous, colossal, humongous, giant, king-sized, medium-sized, long-sized,
short-sized, family-sized, plump, oversize
(4) weight-bulky, chunky, bantam-weight, heavy, light,
hefty, thick
(5) participle-(-ing) cooking, playing, baking, dancing,
swimming, writing, reading, singing (p.p.) fallen, hidden, broken, iced, baked,
written, burnt, mixed, cut, sold, frozen
(6) temperature- cold, fiery, frosty, hot, lukewarm,
temperate, tepid, wintry
(7) humidity-dry, wet, misty, soppy, watery, hazy, foggy,
murky, cloudy, soaked, damp, soaking, drenched, sodden, soggy
(8) shape-round, triangular, rectangular, oval, elongated,
circular, heart-shaped, pear-shaped, egg-shaped, spherical, rounded, globular,
rotund
(9) age-old, young, new, vintage, antique, primeval,
contemporary, current, previous, former, obsolete, medieval, traditional,
long-established, time-honoured
(10) colour-pink, white, black, yellow, magenta, green, red,
purple, blue, brown, grey, orange, sky blue, navy blue, yellow green, beige,
taupe, mauve, lavender, auburn, colourless, fair-skinned, pale-skinned,
(11) origin-South Korean, North Korean, Korean, Japanese,
Chinese, American, Australian, Chilean, Argentinean, Italian, Peruvian,
Canadian, New Zealander, Russian, Swiss, Roman, lunar, solar, Mongolian,
Philippine (culture/government/history), Philippines (news, crime, business,
company)/Filipino (person)
(12) material- bamboo, cotton, crystal, egg, emerald, fibre,
jade, gold, leather, metal, paper, plastic, fabric, apple, banana, beef, pork,
fish, mushroom, mango, tomato, steel, carbon, coal, vinyl, porcelain, pearl,
diamond, ruby, plywood, silver, rock, hydrogen, flour, ivory, wooden
(13) purpose- (-ing) , baking, cooking, , dancing playing, reading,
singing, swimming, writing/ (noun) body, computer, eye, hand, pencil, school, street,
table
By the way, number 5 is either the present participial adjective
or the past participial adjective. The present participial adjective is used to
refer to an action (perhaps developing or functional). Number 13 is the gerundival adjective. It is used to refer to
a purpose. Determining the two adjectives is contextual, so the use of the two
adjectives has to be executed with meticulous attention to detail and background. There are some dictionaries that incorporate these adjectives, but of course its description and definition are confined to few sentences, or worse there is nothing at all.
Of course, the adjective has its own inflexion, but not much in English. A good memory retention is enough. There are some exceptional rules, but, well, a good grammar or a usage book is enough, to blaze a trail for you lest you are at sea. There are a lot of online sites, too, to turn to.
Of course, the adjective has its own inflexion, but not much in English. A good memory retention is enough. There are some exceptional rules, but, well, a good grammar or a usage book is enough, to blaze a trail for you lest you are at sea. There are a lot of online sites, too, to turn to.
We can curiously intertwine our thoughts and the adjective
as we draw in our bookworms to our words, as if by magic – as we quantify and
limit a noun. An understanding of the adjective categorically makes anyone a
better writer as well as a better speaker of English, in general, possibly - for one thing. This is because our life, every stratum of it, I think, should be pervaded by adjectives, since our life is nounlike, theoretical and more tangled than ever, yet it seems rather humdrum, you know.
No comments:
Post a Comment