[Grammar] Adjective

[bluesea1971]

Hi,

I have a question for a multiple choice excercise that reads as follows:

Which sentence does NOT contain an adjective?

A There were so many people in town that you couldn't walk around
B The programme was extremely well organised and everyone enjoyed it
C There are no more tickets available for that show

According to the Answer Key, the correct answer is A

I am totally confused because I understand that "many" in sentence A is an adjective, "organised" in sentence B is an adjective and "available" in sentence C is an adjective.

Can anyone explain this please?

Thanks so much.

Laura

 

[bhaisahab]

"Many" is not an adjective.

 

[5jj]

'Many' is generally classed as a determiner or pronoun these days. It is a determiner in A
'organised' in B is an example of one of the many problems involved with labelling. Some people would say that it was a past particple used in a passive construction, some that it was a past participle used adjectivally, and some that it was an adjective.

 

[philo2009]

Hi,

I have a question for a multiple choice excercise that reads as follows:

Which sentence does NOT contain an adjective?

A There were so many people in town that you couldn't walk around
B The programme was extremely well organised and everyone enjoyed it
C There are no more tickets available for that show

According to the Answer Key, the correct answer is A

I am totally confused because I understand that "many" in sentence A is an adjective, "organised" in sentence B is an adjective and "available" in sentence C is an adjective.

Can anyone explain this please?

Thanks so much.

Laura

You are quite correct: many is an adjective, a determinative adjective, but an adjective nonetheless.

The term 'determiner', correctly used, denotes not a form-class (on a par with nouns, adjectives etc.) but a higher-level function-type on a par with terms such as 'modifier', and just as the latter embraces members of two major form-classes (descriptive adjectives and adverbs), the former covers an even wider range, including such diverse adjectives as 'many' and 'this', articles (a/the) and even nouns in the possessive case (Peter's, etc.).

 

[5jj]

You are quite correct: many is an adjective, a determinative adjective, but an adjective nonetheless.

That's one way of looking at it. My Concise Oxford Dictionary gives 'many' as 'det'; it does not mention 'adj'. I checked a few dictionaries here, OneLook: General dictionary sites , and found:

quantifier: 1
adjective and determiner : 1 (this suggests to me that adj and det are different categories)
addjective: 2
determiner: 3

Quirk et al (1985.67 list 'determiner' and 'adjective' as two separate word classes'.

This is clearly not a topic on which there is full agreement, but a number of authorities consider 'determiner to be a word class distinct from 'adjective'. However, there not being complete agreement, I feel that it is not helpful to insist in an exercise that 'many' is not an adjective.

 

[bhaisahab]

That's one way of looking at it. My Concise Oxford Dictionary gives 'many' as 'det'; it does not mention 'adj'. I checked a few dictionaries here, OneLook: General dictionary sites , and found:

quantifier: 1
adjective and determiner : 1 (this suggests to me that adj and det are different categories)
addjective: 2
determiner: 3

Quirk et al (1985.67 list 'determiner' and 'adjective' as two separate word classes'.

This is clearly not a topic on which there is full agreement, but a number of authorities consider 'determiner to be a word class distinct from 'adjective'. However, there not being complete agreement, I feel that it is not helpful to insist in an exercise that 'many' is not an adjective.

OK "many" might, in some circumstances, be considered to be an adjective. It's a bad test question.

 

[bluesea1971]

Well, I have checked in a few dictionaries where it clearly says that many is an adjective.

I wouldn't worry too much if it was a simple test from anywhere. The problem is that this question is shown in one of the sample tests of TKT of Cambridge (Teaching Knowledge Test).............

 

[5jj]

Well, I have checked in a few dictionaries where it clearly says that 'many' is an adjective.
And a few dictionaries clearly say that it is a determiner. There is not, unfortunately, one universally accepted term.

The problem is that this question is shown in one of the sample tests of TKT of Cambridge (Teaching Knowledge Test).............

As I implied, and bhai said, it's a bad test question.

 

[philo2009]

This is clearly not a topic on which there is full agreement

Indeed, and the reason for that is that some authorities follow the more traditional analytical system, whereby 'many' is classified as an adjective, while others opt for a more 'modern' system whereby it is simply called a determiner.

Others again - such as myself - see value in maintaining both systems, and therefore adopt a 'middle course' of labelling words such as 'many' and 'much' determinative adjectives.

The term 'adjective' - which once even subsumed articles - has essentially undergone a drastic process of semantic limitation over the past few decades, and is applied by some contemporary linguists only to the category formerly known as 'descriptive adjectives' (or, in Quirkian terminology, 'central adjectives'), i.e. essentially those that take degrees of comparison etc.

This is, however, a matter for debate among grammarians, and for which unsuspecting learners in tests clearly should not be used as cannon fodder!

 

[Raymott]

This is, however, a matter for debate among grammarians, and for which unsuspecting learners in tests clearly should not be used as cannon fodder!

Possibly. I was thinking that, until I read that Cambridge was offering the test. If Cambridge University and all the grammars that Cambridge University Press prints treat "many" as an adjective, I think it's fair for a Cambridge test to treat "many" as an adjective.

I don't know the TKT; maybe there is a well-defined set of knowledge that it tests, and the fact that "many" is an adjective is part of that set of knowledge.

 

[philo2009]

Possibly. I was thinking that, until I read that Cambridge was offering the test. If Cambridge University and all the grammars that Cambridge University Press prints treat "many" as an adjective, I think it's fair for a Cambridge test to treat "many" as an adjective.

Apparently, however, the item of "knowledge" being tested according to our questioner is that 'many' - by their lights - is denied that classification!

 

[5jj]

Possibly. I was thinking that, until I read that Cambridge was offering the test. If Cambridge University and all the grammars that Cambridge University Press prints treat "many" as an adjective, I think it's fair for a Cambridge test to treat "many" as an adjective.

I don't know the TKT; maybe there is a well-defined set of knowledge that it tests, and the fact that "many" is an adjective is part of that set of knowledge.

If that were the situation, it would be very unreasonable of Cambridge to impose 'their' idea of terminology. As philo said, "This is, however, a matter for debate among grammarians, and for which unsuspecting learners in tests clearly should not be used as cannon fodder".

 

[Raymott]

If that were the situation, it would be very unreasonable of Cambridge to impose 'their' idea of terminology. As philo said, "This is, however, a matter for debate among grammarians, and for which unsuspecting learners in tests clearly should not be used as cannon fodder".

Yes, I read that. That's what I was responding to.
Why are the learners unsuspecting? If I was going to take a particular test, for example a driving licence test, or a first aid test, I would familiarise myself with the body of knowedge issued by the relevant authorities as what a student should be expected to know.
Who turns up to an exam knowing nothing about it?
If Cambridge University is administering the exam, and marking it, whose opinion should they use to mark the answers? - Oxford University's?

 

[5jj]

Why are the learners unsuspecting? If I was going to take a particular test, for example a driving licence test, or a first aid test, I would familiarise myself with the body of knowedge issued by the relevant authorities as what a student should be expected to know.
I cannot find any information more specific than this - http://www.cambridgeesol.org/assets/pdf/exams/tkt/tkt-handbook.pdf - which does not give much help on 'parts of speech'.

If Cambridge University is administering the exam, and marking it, whose opinion should they use to mark the answers? - Oxford University's?
In that Cambridge is the leading British EFL/TEFL examining body, it would seem to be rather narrow-minded to reject as 'wrong' a category accepted and used by many teachers, coursebooks and grammarians - including Carter and McCarthy in their 'Cambridge Grammar of English'. Huddleston and Pullum in their 'The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language' point out clearly the differences between what they call 'determinatives' (including 'many') and adjectives.

5

 

[bluesea1971]

After going through the book "Practical English Usage" by Michael Swan, which I do like a lot I found the following:

"Determiners come at the beginning of noun phrases, but they are not adjectives"

There are two main groups of determiners:

Group A: articles, possessives and demonstratives

Group B: most of these are "quantifiers". They say how much or how many we are talking about.

In fact, when stating possessives and demonstratives in Group A, the name "adjective" is totally omitted. I would have thought that they are called "possessive adjectives" and "demonstrative adjectives" or at least, that is the way I have always called them.

So my conclusion is that "many" is a quantifier that belongs to Group B determiners and once it is labelled as determiner loses the category of adjective.

Bluesea