WORDS AS BUILDING BLOCKS OF LANGUAGE

WORDS AS BUILDING BLOCKS OF LANGUAGE

Adjectives

Adjectives play three roles as below:
(i) Noun modifiers
As noun modifiers, they always precede the nouns they modify e.g.
 Loud explosion
 Beautiful girl
 Sick old man
 Golden voice etc

(ii) Predicate adjectives

The predicate adjectives follow the linking or descriptive verbs and describe the subject e.g.
 The play was terrific
 The crust turned brown
 Please keep quiet

(a) Articles

In all there are three articles (the, a, an) in the English language and can be categorized as:
 Definite article – „the‟ is the only article in this category
 Indefinite articles – „a‟ and „an‟ are the only two articles in this category
Their applications are discussed as follows:
Definite article – the use of „the‟:
 To define, particularize or single out a noun e.g., I have read „the‟ book.
 To make obvious of what we mean e.g., „The‟ movie ran for three hours.
 To single out the superlative form of noun e.g., „The‟ best employee of „the‟ firm.
 To highlight title of the dignitary e.g., „The‟ Chief Justice
 To single out things that are one of its kind e.g., „the‟ sky, „the‟ sun, „the‟ moon etc
 To common noun that represents a class e.g., „The‟ staff should be part of management.
 To adjectives that indicate a class of persons e.g., „The‟ rich should help „the‟ poor.
 To a distributive measure e.g., Milk is sold by „the‟ litre or by „the‟ kilogram.
 To abstract nouns when particularized e.g., „The‟ honesty of taxi driver was applauded.
 To the names of rivers, mountains, seas, scriptures, newspapers etc e.g., The Ganga, The Himalayas, The Arabian Sea, The Geeta, The Hindustan Times etc
Indefinite article – use of „a‟ and „an‟
Article „a‟ is used:
 In singular nouns e.g., a meeting, a message, a class etc
 With words starting with a consonant e.g., a man, a situation, a behaviour etc
 With words beginning with sound of „y‟ or with „o‟ as in one e.g., a young-man, a one-rupee coin
Article „an‟ is used:
 In singular nouns starting with a vowel e.g., an engineer, an officer etc
 With words where first alphabet is not sounded e.g., an honourable person.