184. Adjectives with Limited Mobility

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Some adjectives can only occupy one of the two common adjective positions

ADJECTIVE USES & LIMITATIONS

English adjectives can occupy various positions relative to the noun they describe. The two main ones are just before the noun and after it with a link verb like BE in between (see 220. Features of Complements). Other positions are straight after the noun (provided the circumstances are right – see 109. Placing an Adjective after its Noun), and more distantly separated from a preceding or following noun (see 283. Lesser-Known Features of Adjectives, #2).

Adjectives with limited mobility are unable to be used in one of the two main ways. Some go only in front of their noun, some must follow it after a separating link verb, and some change their meaning according to which of these positions they occupy. This post illustrates each of these categories and lists adjectives within them that seem most likely to occur in professional writing.

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ADJECTIVES THAT TYPICALLY PRECEDE THEIR NOUN

Adjectives of this kind – technically called “attributive” – cannot be used alone after link verbs like BE, BECOME, REMAIN and SEEM. The word “alone” is important here because many can actually follow a link verb if they have the pronoun one(s) after them (…is a…one: see 263. Uses of “One” and “Ones”, #6). The following are common subtypes of attributive adjectives.

1. Quantity Adjectives

These include precise number words (one, two, etc.) and vaguer ones like few, many, more and several (numerous, though, seems more flexible). They cannot even follow their noun by combining with one(s). Lone quantity adjectives after BE, as in the following example, are a quite common error among English users with a different mother tongue:

(a) *The participants were ten.

One possible correction here is changing were into numbered, a complement-taking verb that allows lone numbers. More common, however, is there + BE and the number word before its noun (see 161. Special Uses of “There” Sentences, #3):

(b) There were ten participants.

If the number word describes a pronoun, incorrect sentences like *We are ten are again best reworded with there, but with of + pronoun after the number word: There are ten of us.

One other way if improving (a) is with in number after the quantity word (…were ten in number). However, this changes the meaning slightly, giving emphasis to the fact that a quantity is being named.

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2. Time Adjectives

Time-referring adjectives that are always attributive include former, latter, past, previous, eventual, ultimate and future. Consider this:

(c) A former president still has political influence.

You could not say *If a president is former… (though you could say …is a former one).

There are a number of other time adjectives that are not purely attributive but in the non-attributive position change their meaning (see below).

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3. Importance Adjectives

These adjectives say that someone or something is the most outstanding or the only member of a non-competitive group. Common examples are chief, especial, leading, lone, main, major, only, primary, principal, sole, top and utmost (see 198. Indicating Importance). Adjectives like these that are not restricted in the same way include important, noticeable and salient. Note that first does not express importance (see #6 below and 296. Tricky Word Contrasts 12, #3).

Importance adjectives need to be distinguished from adjectives indicating high quality like special, outstanding and unique, which can go in any position. Note particularly the non-equivalence of unique and only/sole (see 284. Words with a Surprising Meaning, #13).

Like time adjectives, most importance ones become usable after BE or similar if describing a countable noun and combined with one(s). ln addition, chief and principal are possible in this position before certain preposition phrases like …among them, …in line or …in importance. Indeed, such combinations can even start a sentence.

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4. Other Adjectives

Notable here are mere, utter, upper, very, adverse, alternative and redbrick. Mere, as in a mere boy, associates its noun idea with low status. Utter means “extreme”. For example, an utter fool says someone is displaying maximum foolishness.

Upper represents the top of something relative to its bottom (unlike higher, which can represent any position relative to any position below it). Common partner nouns are atmosphere, body, class, crust, Egypt, floor, layer, level, limit, parts, ranks, reaches and storey. Note also the idiom has the upper hand (= is winning). Upper can be made to follow its noun by adding the/an…one (see 312. Grammar Command Test 3, #b). One cannot say *is up (see 154. Lone Prepositions after BE).

Very used as an attributive adjective is completely different from the adverb (discussed in 98. “Very”, “Much” and “Very Much“). It variably means “extreme” (the very beginning/end), “precise” (the very place) or “strong enough by itself” (the very thought), and it always needs the (see 256. Unusual Meanings of Familiar Words, #9).

Adverse means “unfavourable”. It precedes fairly predictable nouns like circumstances, effects and publicity (see 105. Tricky Word Contrasts 6, #6). The meaning of alternative can be expressed after BE with a synonym like possible (see 181. Expressing Possibility), or the noun alternative or possibility (…is an alternative.: see 266. Indicating Alternatives, #6). For more on redbrick, see 278. Colours, #10.

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ADJECTIVES THAT CANNOT PRECEDE THEIR NOUN

All adjectives become unable to precede their noun if they are made into a phrase by subsequent words that clarify their meaning. Thus, anxious, easily usable by itself before employees, is not when part of a phrase like anxious about their jobs (see 109. Placing an Adjective after its Noun, #2). The primary interest here, however, is adjectives that cannot ever go before their noun. Technically they are called “predicative”.

One group of adjectives belong to this category because they require rather than allow phrase-making words after them. The required words usually start with a preposition, fixed for each adjective but different with different ones (see 111. Words with a Typical Preposition). Common combinations are adept at, averse to, bent on, conducive to, content with (also allows infinitive verb), conversant with, devoid of, incumbent upon, prone to, reliant on and subject to. For more on averse, see 175. Tricky Word Contrasts 6, #6. For more on content, see 254. Tricky Word Contrasts 10, #1.

A major group of other predicative adjectives begins with a-. a prefix meaning “in” (see 146. Some Important Prefix Types). Common examples are ablaze, abroad, adrift, afloat, afoot, afraid, ajar, alight, alike, alive, alone, aloof, apart, ashamed, aside, askew, asleep, astray, aware, awash and awry. Most of these indicate a temporary state.

The meanings of alive and alone can be conveyed before a noun with the purely attributive equivalents live and lone (e.g. an animal that is alive = a live animal). Afraid and asleep have the unrestricted synonyms frightened and sleeping.

Also predicative are ill (mostly), unwell and well.

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ADJECTIVES THAT CHANGE THEIR MEANING ACCORDING TO THEIR POSITION

This group is probably the largest of the three. Some can be listed under the same headings as above.

5. Time Adjectives

Early and late suggest to most people the meanings of before and after a deadline. With these meanings, they can go either before or after their noun (early arrivals/arrivals are early). However, before their noun they can also mean “near the start/end” (as in early/late architecture), and the late means “deceased” (the late John Kennedy).

Current in the sense of “happening now” seems usable both before and after its noun (current works/works are current). However, when the meaning is merely “existing now” (the current President), the pre-noun usage is mandatory. Present with this meaning must also precede its noun, but must follow it when meaning “not absent”.

Old and new meaning “previous” and “latest” go only before their noun, but when meaning “not young” and “freshly made” can go both before and after.

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6. Sequence Adjectives

The number adjectives first, second, third…last are used differently with and without the. With it, they indicate a place, time or list position (the first event, the third reason), and can go either before or after their noun. Without the, however, they indicate a rank in a competition, and usually follow their noun, e.g. …was fifth (see 296. Tricky Word Contrasts 12, #3), except where the noun is place or position (see 157. Tricky Word Contrasts 5, #4).

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7. Adjectives of High Degree

Adjectives with this meaning indicate a very large quantity, as in complete success and a real breakthrough. Like adverbs of high degree, they differ from each other mainly in the words they go with.

Many adjectives of this kind have an alternative meaning with which they can go after BE as well as before their noun. Examples (alternative meaning in brackets) are absolute (not relative), complete (without omissions), pure (unmixed), real (authentic), sheer (high and perpendicular) and true (accurate, loyal: see 152. Agreeing and Disagreeing in Formal Contexts). The adjective sure has two meanings besides the high degree one: “definite” before its noun (e.g. a sure criminal) and “not doubting” after it (criminals who are sure). Note that utter (cf. #4 above) is an exception to this trend: it only has the “high degree”, pre-noun use.

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8. Specialization Adjectives

This category does not seem to have many members that are purely attributive or predicative. Most have one meaning that can exist both before and after the noun, and another that is possible only before. It is this latter meaning that I call “specialization”. It indicates the area of special concern of the person or thing being described.

An example of this usage is industrial plants, plants “specializing in industry” (for more on plants, see 81. Tricky Word Contrasts 2, #8). By contrast, industrial in industrial processes means “with industrial characteristics”, and can follow a link verb.

Other adjectives like this are similarly derived from nouns. They include chemical, criminal, legal, medical, nuclear and social. Thus, a medical school specializes in medicine, whereas a medical condition (or a condition that is medical) merely has medical characteristics.

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9. Focus Adjectives

This group includes certain, exact, individual, particular and precise. With a following noun, they restrict its meaning to a special subgroup of possibilities. For example, certain criminals refers to a special subgroup of criminals (whose identity is unimportant), and precise amounts can mean “the amounts (among all possible amounts) that I have in mind”.

On the other hand, all of these adjectives have an alternative meaning that can only be expressed by using them predicatively. Certain then means “convinced” (e.g. criminals who are certain); precise and exact mean “accurate”; individual means “different”; and particular means “fussy”. Certain also has meanings (“inevitable” and “definitely true”) that are possible both before and after their noun (see 226. Words with Complicated Grammar 2, #2).

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10. Other Adjectives

The following are notable (A = Attributive; P = Predicative):

apparent = seeming (A), observable (A, P)
near = almost (A), close (P) (see 254. Tricky Word Contrasts 10, #4)
poor = deserving pity (A), lacking money (A, P)
sorry = wretched (A), remorseful (A, P) (see also 48. Tricky Word Contrasts 1, #6)
ready = available (A), prepared (P)

183. Statements between Commas

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Statements between two commas either mark the rest of their sentence as indirect speech or comment on it

KEY CHARACTERISTICS

Two commas, or a comma and a full stop, are a familiar means of adding words to an already grammatical sentence (see 50. Right and Wrong Comma Places). They resemble paired brackets or dashes, but are weaker. The name commonly given to the words surrounded by any of these punctuation types is a “parenthesis”.

Parentheses are grammatically very varied, ranging from a single word to a sentence or more (see 294. Parentheses). Here, though, I wish to concentrate on the kind containing a verb with its subject, often without any further words. It is the presence of a verb that explains the word “statements” in the title above.

The verb in a parenthesis will not be the only one in the sentence – it cannot be if the parenthesis is outside the main sentence structure. Normally, when a sentence has two verbs, a “joining device” must also be present – otherwise the new verb makes a new sentence (see 30. When to Write a Full Stop). However, statements between commas only occasionally need a joining device – most usually when they form “non-defining relative clauses” with who, which etc. (see 34. Relative Pronouns and Commas). Here is a typical use without a joining device (verbs in capitals):

(a) Too much money, one COULD ARGUE, IS COMING into sport.

Here, the parenthesis is in the middle of the sentence, but it could also go at the end, the full stop replacing the second comma.  In a few cases (though not here) it could also go at the start, with a comma after.

The parenthesis in (a) shows the rest of its sentence to be indirect speech. Others act very like adverbs. In the following sections I wish to look in detail at these two uses.

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COMMA STATEMENTS WITH INDIRECT SPEECH

1. General Features

The comma statement in (a) can be recognised as a marker of indirect speech partly from the kind of verb in it (argue), a typical indirect speech one (see 150. Verb Choices with Reported Speech), and partly because the sentence meaning is unchanged if the parenthetical words are moved to the start and combined with the main part of the sentence in a typical indirect speech structure (one could argue that… – see 127. When to Use Indirect Speech).

It should be noted, however, that “indirect speech” has a very broad meaning here, since it includes cases where the “speaker” is not human, but rather something speaking on behalf of a human, such as a diagram or table (e.g. as Table 3 indicates – see 104. Naming Data Sources with “as”). Note also that when the indirect speech alongside a comma statement is a question, it keeps most of the features of direct questions, just dropping quotation marks and sometimes changing a tense:

(b) Who was responsible, everyone wondered, for these atrocities?

If the words in this parenthesis start the sentence, the commas must disappear and the question must acquire all of the features of indirect questions, including an absent question mark (see 57. Indirect Questions in Formal Writing).

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2. Uses

The uses of indirect speech formed with a comma statement are broadly the same as those of indirect speech formed in the ordinary way. The common reporting use is illustrated in sentence (b), a report of something said or thought by everyone. A typical non-reporting use – indicating the character of a statement – is in sentence (a), where one could argue tells us that the writer is giving an opinion rather than a fact (see 127. When to Use Indirect Speech).

In the following example, there is again no report:

(c) Whereabouts, could you tell me, is the library?

Here, the effect of converting the question into an indirect one is greater politeness (see 219. Wording next to Indirect Questions). One alternative to could you tell me is may I ask.

Indirect speech created by a comma statement is probably not as common as the ordinary kind. I would suggest the following reasons for preferring it.

A major special use seems to be to give more prominence to the indirect speech – to focus on it rather than its reporting. This is suggested by the different grammatical form of the indirect speech compared to the ordinary kind. Ordinary indirect speech is what grammarians call “subordinated”: forming a part of a statement made by the words around it – usually the object (see 37. Subordination). The subordination is indicated by special link words (“subordinators”): that with statements, question words like whether with questions, and infinitive verbs with commands.

Indirect speech signalled by a parenthetical statement, by contrast, is not subordinated – no subordinators are visible or understood. Moreover, although the parenthetical statement may also not be subordinated, it sometimes is, usually by means of the conjunction as. This word could be added in (a), but not in (b) or (c), perhaps because they are indirect questions. However, even where the parenthesis lacks a subordinator, the absence of one with the indirect speech still makes that much more prominent than it would be in the ordinary form.

A second possible reason for preferring to signal indirect speech with a parenthesis is to mark a statement as a continuation of a preceding report:

(d) Jones (2017, p. 62) argues for higher taxes. A remorseless, decades-long push for lower taxes, Jones writes, has brought the current level of taxation to an unacceptably low level.

This kind of multi-sentence reporting is also possible with a non-parenthetical passive reporting verb (is said by Jones…) combined with the infinitive form of the verb in the report (… to have brought…) – see 299. Infinitives after a Passive Verb, #2. Sometimes, there is even no second mention at all of the original speaker (see 207. Exotic Grammar Structures 4, #4).

Thirdly, a parenthetical statement might be useful when a speaker has begun to say something without making it indirect and then realises that an indirect form might be more advisable. Parenthetical statements are useful in this situation because of their ability to be added late in a sentence. They would be particularly utilised in speech – e.g. (c) above – where unplanned word ordering is more usual.

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3. Role of “as”

Clear explanations of when and why as might suitably begin a comma statement are hard to find. One definite situation that rules it out is when the report verb is one like CRITICISE, DENY or DEFINE, which grammatically rule it out (see 279. Grammatical Differences between Citation Verbs, #4).

Before a suitable verb, as usually seems to accompany indirect speech of the reported kind (a rare exception being in the fixed semi-apologetic expression as it were: see 247. Exotic Grammar Structures 6, #5). Certainly, as is not possible in such non-reporting parentheses as one could argue in (a) and the formulaic I have to say.

The reporting use generally seems to suggest the writer’s agreement. This might explain the frequent use of as parentheses for referencing an argument-supporting point borrowed from another writer (see Ways of Arguing 1), and for introducing a comment on a neighbouring data source (diagram, table, graph etc: see 104. Naming Data Sources with “As”): when you say what you see, you usually agree with it!

Two as expressions that seem particularly common in these contexts are as…puts it for quoting (see 190. Special Uses of “it”, #4) and as mentioned above for “good” repetition of an earlier point (see 24. Good and Bad Repetition).

A common grammar error to avoid with this kind of as, alongside the use with an unsuitable verb, is use with a later that (see 133. Confusions of Similar Structures 1, #4).

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4. Form Variation

Comma statements often invite use of I, we or you – undesirable words in formal writing (see 46. How to Avoid “I”, “We” and “You”). For their avoidance after as, see 104. Naming Data Sources with “As”. Elsewhere, one can use one or it. Sentence (a) above illustrates a phrase with one that can replace I think. To use it, the verb must normally be passive, e.g. it can be argued… in (a) (see 107. The Language of Opinions). However, some verbs rule out the passive. How might it be used in the following?

(e) Nobody else, we believe, has tried this method before.

One could here use it seems (likely) or the indications are or just the parenthetical adverb apparently.

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OTHER COMMA STATEMENTS

Where comma statements do not signal indirect speech, their verb usually expresses speaking or thinking by the sentence author, and has the -ing (participle) form (see 320. Special Participle Uses, #5), e.g.:

(f) Speaking as economists, we have to disagree.

Such verbs often lack an object noun, but then need an as phrase (as economists) or adverb, e.g. honestly. Common verbs besides speaking include arguing, reasoning, thinking and writing. Two frequent verbs that need an object are considering and ignoring.

Participle-based comma statements beginning a sentence look like ordinary participles there. They differ, though, in being more usable before a main verb whose subject is not the same as their own, like inflation in the following:

(g) Speaking honestly, inflation has to be controlled.

For details of why ordinary participles often cannot be used like this, see 75. How to Avoid “Dangling” Participles.

Participle-based comma statements also resemble what I call “communication-describing” adverbs like bluntly, which say how their user is speaking (see 121. Sentence-Spanning Adverbs #2). Indeed, some of the adverbs that can accompany speaking etc. – e.g. bluntly, clearly, frankly, honestly, plainly – are also usable alone.

Occasionally, the verb in a comma statement like (f) or (g) is an infinitive (with to) rather than participle:

(h) Modern sport is, to put it mildly, all about money.

It is seemingly particular verbs that accompany to. PUT (+ it + adverb) is common, another example being to put it another way (see 286. Repeating in Different Words, #6). However, putting is also possible, or the passive participle put without to, -ing or it – put mildly above.

To also accompanies lone verbs indicating a link with a neighbouring sentence – e.g. to finish, to begin with (see 168. Ways of Arguing 2) and (informally) to start with. Some combinations are frequent enough to become “connectors” (see 259. Multi-Word Connectors).

To be is possible with a speaker-describing adjective like blunt, critical, exact, fair, frank, honest, plain, precise, sure and truthful. To mention and to state are possible with a following object, e.g. to mention no names, to mention/ state the obvious.

A few other verbs have to only in fixed expressions, some again classifiable as “connectors”, e.g. to cut a long story short, to cap it all, to make things worse (see 260. Formal Written Uses of “Thing”, #7), to say the least, to name but/just a few and to tell the truth.