Adjectives are broken down into two basic syntactic categories:
Attributive Adjectives
Attributive adjectives are the ones that often appear directly before the nouns or pronouns they describe or modify.
example:
"The red dress fits Atina perfectly."
"Red" is a color. It is an adjective, and it is used in this sentence to describe the dress which is a noun.
It is also possible to say:
"The beautiful dress fits Atina perfectly."
or
"The long dress fits Atina perfectly."
"Beautiful" and "long" are both adjectives too, and they are used to describe the dress. Again, the usage of adjectives will always depend on the idea that needs to be expressed.
It can be noticed that red, beautiful, and long appear before the nouns they describe. Since they do, they are called "attributive".
Any adjective that appears before the noun or pronoun it describes is an attributive adjective.
Attributive Adjectives appear after the indefinite pronouns they describe too, indefinite pronouns like someone, anyone, nobody, and anyone.
example:
"Anybody good at math should join the competition."
"We should give this shirt to somebody tall."
It can be seen that after the indefinite pronouns "anybody" and "somebody", there followed the adjectives describing them: good and tall. These adjectives directly followed without any linking verb in between.
Any adjective that appears before the noun or pronoun it describes is an attributive adjective. So does any adjective that appears after the noun or pronoun it describes without a linking verb in between.
Predicative Adjectives
Predicative Adjectives, on the other hand, always appear after the noun or pronoun they describe, connected by a linking verb.
examples:
"Kyle is tall."
"These students are smart."
"Cherry Blossoms are fantastic."
The words in red are all nouns. They are described with the adjectives tall, smart, and fantastic which are in green. And as seen, they are connected using the linking verbs is and are.
Any adjective that appears after the noun or pronoun it describes with a linking verb in between is a Predicative Adjective.
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