Adjective groups

We're at the end of this introductory section about adjective groups. How have you been going so far? Not bad, right? These guys aren't too hard.

In the next section, we'll dive into more detail about specific components in adjective groups because some words have particular functions.

But before we go on, let's stop and take one more look at where adjective groups tend to appear inside a sentence because something interesting is going on. 🤔

Note: this page will make more sense if you've done the noun groups lesson.

We said at the start of this section that adjectives usually appear before the noun.

That's true! We weren't lying. Here's one of the snippets we saw before to prove it:

But!

If you've done the lesson on noun groups, you'll know there's more to nouns than nouns!

Take a look at that snippet again in terms of not just a noun but a whole noun group. Are there any other noun group components?

Yes, there is a pointer: 'a'.

First comes the pointer, then we have the adjective group, and then finally we have the main noun.

And now maybe this is coming back to you from the noun group lesson: that noun groups can contain describers and classifiers, and now you might be realising that those words are adjectives, and that adjective groups have been in your noun groups all along!

So yes, adjective groups usually come before the noun, but not the noun group—in fact they are usually embedded somewhere in the middle of a noun group, like filling in a sandwich.

Here's another example from the noun groups lesson, with the embedded adjective groups highlighted:

What about when an adjective group comes after a noun?

Let's take another look at a snippet we saw earlier:

As we said on the previous page, when we want to talk about the state of a thing or person we use a Noun-Be-Adjective pattern: "He is tired." "It is cold."