5.2-Adjectival sequencing, punctuation, and determiners Flashcards
Royal order of adjectives intro
Sometimes, you may want to use several adjectives
in a sequence to describe the one thing. However, multiple adjectives in a sequence conform to a specific order. While these rules come naturally to native English speakers, they are, nevertheless, important to know. Some grammarians refer to this as
‘The Royal Order of Adjectives’
Royal Order of Adjectives
The Royal Order of Adjectives, such words are arranged in sequence according to 1-observation, 2-size, 3-shape, 4-age, 5-colour, 6-origin, 7-material, and any 8-qualifier.
examples
For example: ‘An expensive old umbrella stand’, where ‘expensive’ is an observation, ‘old’ is, of course, the age, and ‘umbrella’ qualifies the noun ‘stand’.
In the sentence ‘her long black silk gown’, ‘long’ defines the shape, ‘black’ the colour, and ‘silk’ the material, of the noun ‘gown’.
Exception
‘I want the silver antique tea pot, not the pewter one’. Whereas, according to The Royal Order of Adjectives, the sentence would read ‘I want the antique silver tea pot’, ‘silver’, the material, precedes ‘antique’, its age, because it is being compared to ‘pewter’.
This is made for EMPHASIS
Adjectives punctuation rules
1-cumulative adjectives
2-determiner
3-same category?
1-When punctuating cumulative adjectives, put commas only between those of the same category.
2-Also, never put a comma after a determiner, or before the noun being described.
3-Comma to split adjectives of the same category
The phrase ‘six small apples’ requires no comma between ‘six’ and ‘small’. Similarly, there is no comma after the determiner or before the noun in ‘the great white whale’.
However, in the phrase ‘the long, rectangular wooden box’ there is a comma between ‘long’ and ‘rectangular’, because they are both of the same category: That of ‘shape’.
Punctuation: AND / reverse
Use comma if you could place AND between words.
You should also use a comma if ‘and’ could be placed between the words,
and if the words could be reversed and still retain your intended meaning.
In ‘some sneaky and hungry goblins stole my food, ‘some sneaky, hungry goblins stole my food’, and ‘some hungry, sneaky goblins stole my food’, ‘and’ can be placed between ‘sneaky’ and ‘hungry’, and the sentence will mean the same thing in each case.
Phrasal adjective
Phrasal adjectives, also known as compound adjectives, modify nouns. They take a hyphen when coming before a noun, and not when coming after. They are not hyphenated in proper nouns.
For example, you could write ‘the wine-dark sea’, and use a hyphen, but would describe the sea as ‘wine dark’. In the same way, a ‘30-cent cone’ is hyphenated, whereas ‘the cone is 30 cents’ is not. Note that numbers do not pluralise.
Finally, ‘The Monty Python comedy school’, which would otherwise take a hyphen, does not because ‘Monty Python’ is a proper noun.
Hanging hyphens
When two phrasal adjectives share an ending, it is correct to remove the ending of the first phrase, provided you keep the ending of the second. Consider the phrase ‘ the eight- or nine-year-old boy’, where ‘year-old’ is omitted in the first phrase.
Adjectival morphing
Some adjectives can morph into nouns, such as collectibles, when referring to collectible objects, or a post-mortem, when referring to a post-mortem examination.
Adjectival morphing into verbs
In the sentence ‘the Fonz is a pretty cool guy’, ‘cool’ is an adjective. In ‘be sure to cool the drinks before the Fonz gets here’, the adjective ‘cool’ functions as a verb.
Determiners
Determiners introduce nouns or noun phrases, and provide information regarding possession, definiteness, specificity, or quantity.
While they function like adjectives, they are not adjectives, as they express relationships rather than attributes.
Determiners can be articles, possessive nouns, demonstrative, possessive, or indefinite pronouns, quantifiers, cardinal numbers, or ordinal numbers.
In the sentence ‘a large dog walked by’, ‘a’, an article, is the determiner.
In ‘Kate’s car has broken down’, ‘Kate’s’ is a possessive noun.
In the sentences ‘there’s only one turkey left’ and ‘Alice came second last’, ‘one’ and ‘second’ are determiners, and cardinal and ordinal numbers respectively.
As you can see, some determiners are also pronouns.
Determiner / pronoun
To distinguish between them, you must determine their function in the sentence.
Consider the sentence ‘how many chocolates did you eat?’
If the response is ‘we ate several chocolates’, ‘several’, an indefinite pronoun, is a determiner.
But, if the response is ‘we ate several’, then ‘several’ functions as a pronoun.
