ADJ: adjective
Definition
Adjectives are words that typically modify nouns and specify their properties or attributes:
The oldest French bridge
They may also function as predicates, as in:
The car is green.
Some words that could be seen as adjectives (and are tagged as such in other annotation schemes) have a different tag in UD: See DET for determiners and NUM for (cardinal) numbers.
ADJ is also used for “proper adjectives” such as European
(“proper” as in proper nouns, i.e., words that are derived from names
but are adjectives rather than nouns).
Numbers vs. Adjectives: In general, cardinal numbers receive the
part of speech NUM, while ordinal numbers (more
precisely adjectival ordinal numerals) receive the tag ADJ.
There are words that may traditionally be called numerals in
some languages (e.g., Czech) but which are treated as adjectives in our
universal tagging scheme. In particular, the adjectival ordinal numerals
(note: Czech also has adverbial ones) behave both morphologically and syntactically as
adjectives and are tagged ADJ.
Nouns vs. Adjectives: A noun modifying another noun to form a compound noun is given the tag NOUN not ADJ.
On the other hand, adjectives that exceptionally head a nominal phrase (as in the sick, the healthy)
are still tagged ADJ.
Participles: Participles are word forms that may share properties and
usage of any of adjectives, nouns, and verbs. Depending on the language and context, they
may be classified as any of ADJ, NOUN or VERB.
Adjectival modifiers of adjectives: In general, an ADJ is modified by an ADV (very strong).
However, sometimes a word modifying an ADJ is still regarded as an ADJ. These cases include: (i) ordinal numeral modifiers of a superlative adjective (the third oldest bridge) and (ii) when a pair of adjectives form a compound adjectival modifier (an African American mayor).
Examples
- big
- old
- green
- African
- incomprehensible
- first, second, third
References
ADJ in other languages: [bej] [bg] [bm] [ca] [cs] [cy] [da] [el] [en] [es] [et] [eu] [fi] [fro] [fr] [ga] [grc] [hu] [hy] [it] [ja] [ka] [kk] [kpv] [ky] [myv] [no] [pcm] [pt] [qpm] [ru] [sl] [sv] [tr] [tt] [uk] [u] [urj] [vi] [xcl] [yue] [zh]