Other One-Word Adjectives

Adjectives became a recognized part of speech in the 1700s. They belong to a larger category, which grammarians sometimes use to describe words and groups of words: Adjectives (and adverbs) are called modifiers. Above we saw those little words, the articles, that help describe the nouns we use in our sentences.

Other words also form partial adjectival functions. They modify nouns but they don’t have other attributes of adjectives, such as comparative and superlative forms. In addition to the articles, they include the demonstrative pronouns this, that, these, those; the possessive pronouns my, your, his, her, its, our, their; and quantifying words like many, much, any, some, few, and others. These words help modify nouns, but most of them do not have comparative and superlative states (much has no comparative-superlative form, but few does—fewer, fewest).


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