English Grammar in Familiar Lectures / Accompanied by a compendium, embracing a new systematic order of parsing, a new system of punctuation, exercises in false syntax, and a system of philosophical grammar, in notes, to which are added an appendix and a key to the exercises : designed for the use of schools and private learners

by Samuel Kirkham

You will frequently find the adjective placed after the noun; as, "Those men are tall; A lion is bold; The weather is calm; The tree is three feet thick."

Should you ever be at a loss to distinguish an adjective from the other parts of speech, the following sign will enable you to tell it. Any word that will make sense with the word thing added, or with any other noun following it, is an adjective; as, a high thing, a low thing, a hot thing, a cold thing, an unfinished thing, a new-fashioned thing:—or, a pleasant prospect, a long-deserted dwelling, an American soldier, a Greek Testament. Are these words adjectives, distant, yonder, peaceful, long-sided, double-headed? A distant object or thing, yonder hill, &c. They are. They will make sense with a noun after them. Adjectives sometimes become adverbs. This matter will be explained in Lecture VI. In parsing, you may generally know an adjective by its qualifying a noun or pronoun.

Most words ending in ing are present participles. These are frequently used as adjectives; therefore, most participles will make sense with the addition of the word thing, or any other noun, after them; as, a pleasing thing, a moving spectacle, mouldering ruins.

In the Latin language, and many others, adjectives, like nouns, have gender, number, and case; but in the English language, they have neither gender, person, number, nor case. These properties belong to creatures and things, and not to their qualities; therefore gender, person, number, and case, are the properties of nouns, and not of adjectives.

Adjectives are varied only to express the degrees of comparison. They have three degrees of comparison, the Positive, the Comparative, and the Superlative.

The positive degree expresses the quality of an object without any increase or diminution; as, good, wise, great.

The comparative degree increases or lessens the positive in signification; as, better, wiser, greater, less wise.

The superlative degree increases or lessens the positive to the highest or lowest degree; as, best, wisest, greatest, least wise.

COMPARISON OF ADJECTIVES.

More and most form the comparative and superlative degrees by increasing the positive; and less and least, by diminishing it.