Daniel Kies Department of English College of DuPage
Modern English Grammar English 2126		Contact Form

The Adjective Phrase

The adjective phrase in English has four functional constituents, premodification, those modifying, describing, or qualifying constituents which precede the head; the head, which is an adjective or participle serving as the focus of the phrase; postmodification, that modifying constituent which follows the head; and complementation, (the major subcategory of postmodification here) that constituent which follows any postmodification and completes the specification of a meaning implied by the head.		Current work:   Days remaining this term: Notes: Add Note |  Log in? | Privacy | Change Name & Email Mail this page to a friend

To see some examples of adjective phrases, examine the table below.

Some Examples of the Adjective Phrase in English
FUNCTION			Premodifier	Head	Postmodifier
	(a)			happy
E	(b)			excited	indeed
X	(c)		partly	cloudy
A	(d)			young	in spirit
M	(e)		very	energetic	for his age
P	(f)		so extremely	sweet
L	(g)		too	good	to be true
E	(h)			hot	enough for me
S	(i)		quite	worried	about the results of the test
	(j)		unusually	sunny	for this time of year
FORM					Adverb
			Adverb	Adjective	Prepositional Phrase
			Adverb Phrase		Infinitive Clause

Notice that the order of constituents in the adjective phrase, like all other phrase structures in English, is relatively fixed, helping us determine the constituent elements.

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