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Chapter II Syntax and semantics of adjective phrases in English
II.1 Adjective as a part of speech
In grammar, an adjective is a part of speech that modifies a noun or a pronoun, usually by describing it or making its meaning more specific. Adjectives exist in most languages. The most widely recognized adjectives in English are words such as big, old, and tired that actually describe people, places, or things. These words can themselves be modified with adverbs, as in the phrase very big. The articles a, an, and the and possessive nouns, such as Mary's, are classified as adjectives by some grammarians; however, such classification may be specific to one particular language. Other grammarians call such noun modifiers determiners. Similarly, possessive adjectives, such as his or her, are sometimes called determinative possessive pronouns, and demonstrative adjectives, such as this or that, are called determinative demonstratives. In some languages, participles are used as adjectives. Examples of participles used as adjectives are lingering in the phrase lingering headache and broken in the phrase broken toys. Nouns that modify other nouns are sometimes called modifying nouns, nouns used adjectivally, or just part of a compound noun (like the word ice in ice cream).⁹
The characteristic features of the adjective as a part of speech are as follows:

1. 
   their lexical-grammatical meaning of attributes or we may say that they express property of things /persons/;
   

2. from the morphological view point they have the category of degrees of comparison;
3. from the point of view of their combinality they combine with nouns, as it has already been stated above, they express the properties of things. The words that express things we call nouns. It seems to be important to differentiate the combinability of a word with other words and reference of a word of a part of speech to another part of speech. We put this because adjectives modify nouns but they can combine with adverbs, link verbs and the word “one”: a white horse. The horse is white. The sun rose red. The sun rose extremely red.
4. the stem-building affixes are: -ful, -less, -ish, -ous, -ive, -ir, un-, -pre-, in-...;
5. their syntactic functions are: attribute and predicative It is important to point out that in the function of an attribute the adjectives are in most cases used in pre-position; in post- position they are very seldom: time immemorial; chance to come.
The category of comparison of adjectives shows the absolute or relative quality of a substance.
Syntactic Functions of Adjectives.
Adjectives may serve in the sentence as:
1) an attribute e.g. Do you see the small green boat, which has such an odd shape? The lights of the farm blazed out in the windy darkness.
Adjectives used as attributes usually immediately precede the noun.
Normally there is no pause between the adjective and the noun. Such attributes are called close attributes. However, an adjective placed in pre-position to the noun may be separated from it by a pause. Then it becomes a loose attribute.¹⁰
e.g. Clever and tactful, George listened to my story with deep concern.
Yet loose attributes are more often found in post-position to the noun.
e.g. My father, happy and tired, kissed me good-night.
2) a predicative
e.g. Her smile was almost professional.
He looked mature, sober and calm.
3) part of a compound verbal predicate
e.g. He stood silent, with his back turned to the window.
She lay motionless, as if she were asleep.
4) an objective predicative
e.g. I thought him very intelligent.
She wore her hair short.
5) a subjective predicative
e.g. The door was closed tight.
Her hair was dyed blonde.
It should be noted that most adjectives can be used both attributively and predicatively, but some, among them those beginning with a-, can be used only as predicatives (e.g. afraid, asleep, along, alive, awake, ashamed and also content, sorry, well, ill, due, etc.) A few adjectives can be used only as attributes (e.g. outer, major, minor, only, whole, former, latter and some others).