"Post-positive adjectives" explanation

[Justin Mallone]

Wikipedia defines a post-positive adjective as “an attributive
adjective that is placed after the noun or pronoun that it modifies.
This contrasts with prepositive adjectives, which come before the noun
or pronoun.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postpositive_adjective

There is a link on the Wikipedia page to this site:

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/internet-grammar/adjectiv/postpos.htm

which has some examples:

> We refer to these as POSTPOSITIVE adjectives. Postposition is
> obligatory when the adjective modifies a pronoun:
> something useful
> everyone present
> those responsible

So let’s take one of these examples and expand it into a full
sentence.

“Everyone present voted on the bill.”

This use of “present” is an adjective. OK.

But now consider this sentence:

“The Senators present voted on the bill.”

This sounds okay to me. A bit non-standard but okay.

What would be more standard? A relative clause:

“The Senators who were present voted on the bill.”

So I wonder if the real principle behind “post-positive adjectives”
is that they’re shortcuts for not writing out a relative clause. Their
position after the noun they modify is fine because of the following
fact: within the relative clause they’re standing for, they were
actually coming after a linking verb. Linking verbs define one of the
two types of sentences and let adjectives serve in a complement position
after the noun they modify.


Also onsider this example:

“Those responsible will be found.”

expanded out with a relative clause, this would be:

“Those that were responsible will be found.”

Consider the following examples of post-positive adjectives (and I’ll
note what could be a partially-omitted relative clause in parentheses).

“the shortest route (that was) possible”
“the worst conditions (that were) imaginable”
“the best hotel (that was) available”

the ucl.ac.uk page describes stuff like “the shortest route
possible” as examples of how “[p]ostpositive adjectives are commonly
found together with superlative, attributive adjectives.”

What do people think about my partially omitted relative clause
explanation for some post-positive adjectives?

-JM

[Kate Sams]

I like it. I think you’ve identified what’s going on — they’ve omitted part of the relative clause.

So, one question is how to handle these situations in which stuff is omitted?

Do we create new categorizations with new terminology, such as “post-positive adjective”? Or do we figure out the meaning of the sentence, put in what has been omitted, and just use standard grammatical categorizations, such as “relative clause”?

I think it’s better to do that latter.

It’s simpler; there’s less fancy terminology involved. It emphasizes the similarity between the example at hand and standard examples of relative clauses. And it successfully helps us understand the functions of the words; it gets the job done.

[Anne B]

Or could we just call them adjectives? I don't think we need to label
adjectives differently depending on whether they are before or after
the noun they modify.

Note that adjectives that come before nouns could also be replaced by
relative clauses. Examples:

- the red ball -> the ball that is red
- the happy child -> the child that is happy

The following page gives a historical reason why some adjectives come
after the nouns they modify. It doesn't apply to the examples that
Justin gave though.

https://www.dailywritingtips.com/how-to-treat-postpositive-adjectives/

> Nearly a thousand years ago, the Norman Conquest had a profound effect not only on the English nation but also on the English language. One of the manifestations of this event is the survival of the postpositive adjective.
>
> In many languages, including French, a modifying word follows the word it modifies, such as in the phrase ressource naturelle (“natural resources”). Because of Norman French’s influence on law, politics, and other matters sovereign, we still sometimes use this form in the mongrel melange that is the English language.
>
> Thus “attorney general” (as well as “secretary general” and “postmaster general”), which refers not to a military rank but to the office holder’s generic scope of responsibility. Thus court-martial, which literally pertains to a court of a martial, or warlike, nature but practically applies to a military court in wartime or peacetime. Thus “heir apparent” and knight-errant, artifacts of feudal system. (Note that compound form is inconsistent: Open compounds prevail, but some hyphenated forms persist. When in doubt, look the term up. If certain, look the term up anyway.)

[Kate Sams]

On Jul 24, 2019, at 8:15 AM, Anne B anne...@gmail.com [fallible-ideas] <fallibl...@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Jul 21, 2019 at 12:19 PM 'Kate Sams' via Fallible Ideas
> <fallibl...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
>> On Jul 20, 2019, at 10:08 PM, Justin Mallone <just...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>

>>> Wikipedia defines a post-positive adjective as “an attributive adjective that is placed after the noun or pronoun that it modifies. This contrasts with prepositive adjectives, which come before the noun or pronoun..”

The word is certainly *functioning* as an adjective. (I think a relative clause is a group of words that functions as an adjective). So, I think you’re right. As for what to call it, sure, call it an “adjective”.

However, I still think it’s useful to think of there being a partially-omitted relative clause in there. One reason is that it highlights a connection between post-positive adjectives and relative clauses. This helps you better unify and organize your knowledge of “ways to pull off the adjective functionality". Another reason is that it’s easier to figure out what’s going on if you don't already know. If I can make the word into a relative clause, then I know I’m dealing with an adjective (even though it is uncharacteristically following the noun that it modifies).

> Note that adjectives that come before nouns could also be replaced by
> relative clauses. Examples:
>
> - the red ball -> the ball that is red
> - the happy child -> the child that is happy

But it’s easy to identify the functionality of adjectives that comes before the noun they modify. That’s how standard adjectives generally work in our language — they come before the noun they modify. It’s trickier to figure out what’s going on when the adjective comes after the noun (and the adjective can’t come before without sounding wrong). For example:

>>> We refer to these as POSTPOSITIVE adjectives. Postposition is obligatory when the adjective modifies a pronoun:
>>> something useful
>>> everyone present
>>> those responsible

In these cases, if you can create a relative clause:

something that is useful
everyone who was present
those who are responsible

then that makes it easier to identify that the word in question is functioning as an adjective.

But this is more about how to think of them. If your main point is what to *call* them, then I don’t have a criticism of calling them “adjectives”, instead of “relative clauses”.

Do you have a criticism of *thinking* of them as relative clauses?

[Justin Mallone]

I should note that the UCL page I cite above seems correct in the
description it offers of when postposition is *obligatory* for
adjectives. It says postposition is “obligatory when the adjective
modifies a pronoun.”

Like, you could say “The present Senators voted on the bill,” but
not “The present everyone.” And you could say “The responsible
criminals” but not “The responsible those.”

typo, you meant “the latter” I think.

Regarding your question, I think I basically agree. “Post-positive
adjective” isn’t great terminology. I found some sites talking about
stuff using that terminology, and so I rolled with it, but overall I’d
say the the approach to take is something like this: if you want to have
an understanding of (at least some) cases where adjectives come after
the nouns they modify, then we have a tentative explanation as to why
that’s okay. We can talk about this issue in terms of standard English
terminology and concepts (which includes adjectives and relative
clauses) and that’s fine.

>> It’s simpler; there’s less fancy terminology involved. It
>> emphasizes the similarity between the example at hand and standard
>> examples of relative clauses. And it successfully helps us understand
>> the functions of the words; it gets the job done.
>
> Or could we just call them adjectives? I don't think we need to label
> adjectives differently depending on whether they are before or after
> the noun they modify.

I agree we don’t need a special label. If we want to talk about the
issue, we can just explain it simply (e.g. “Why are there cases where
adjectives come after the noun they modify instead of before? What’s
going on when that happens?”)

-JM

[Anne B]

On Wed, Jul 24, 2019 at 12:55 PM 'Kate Sams' via Fallible Ideas

I do think it could be helpful to check if something is functioning as
an adjective by trying to make it into a relative clause and seeing if
that works. But if it's already obvious that the thing is an adjective
then this isn't necessary.

[Anne B]

I do think it's good that we are talking about the issue. Before this
thread, I hadn't thought about when an adjective comes after its noun
instead of before.

[Kate Sams]

>> But it’s easy to identify the functionality of adjectives that comes before the noun they modify. That’s how standard adjectives generally work in our language — they come before the noun they modify.. It’s trickier to figure out what’s going on when the adjective comes after the noun (and the adjective can’t come before without sounding wrong). For example:

>>
>>>>> We refer to these as POSTPOSITIVE adjectives. Postposition is obligatory when the adjective modifies a pronoun:
>>>>> something useful
>>>>> everyone present
>>>>> those responsible
>>
>> In these cases, if you can create a relative clause:
>>
>> something that is useful
>> everyone who was present
>> those who are responsible
>>
>> then that makes it easier to identify that the word in question is functioning as an adjective.
>>
>> But this is more about how to think of them. If your main point is what to *call* them, then I don’t have a criticism of calling them “adjectives”, instead of “relative clauses”.
>>
>> Do you have a criticism of *thinking* of them as relative clauses?
>
> I do think it could be helpful to check if something is functioning as
> an adjective by trying to make it into a relative clause and seeing if
> that works. But if it's already obvious that the thing is an adjective
> then this isn't necessary.

Why do you think it would be obvious? At this point in my understanding, I wouldn’t classify any potential post-positive adjective as too obvious to check — especially when you consider the existence of examples such as “Make him angry” and “I prefer my coffee black.” in which the adjective follows the noun, yet it’s not a standard adjective-noun relationship. I think it’s probably more common for the word in question to *not* be a standard adjective that modifies the noun preceding it.

And the issue isn’t just whether the word is an adjective. “Angry” and “black” are adjectives. But they don’t have the same relationship to the noun preceding them as “useful” does in “something useful”.

Also, you're suggesting that if one of the reasons I gave (i.e. needing to figure out what’s going on) doesn’t apply, then it’s not necessary to view these words as partially-omitted relative clauses. This implies that you disagree with the other reason I gave:

>> One reason is that it highlights a connection between post-positive adjectives and relative clauses. This helps you better unify and organize your knowledge of “ways to pull off the adjective functionality”.

Do you disagree with this? Broadly, what I’m suggesting is to not have all of these little, disparate pieces of knowledge about adjective functionality. I think it’s better to look for ways that they relate to each other, including one being a subcategory of another. So, in this case post-positive adjectives would be seen as a subcategory of relative clauses.

[Anne B]

On Sat, Jul 20, 2019 at 10:08 PM Justin Mallone <just...@gmail.com> wrote:

> So let’s take one of these examples and expand it into a full
> sentence.
>
> “Everyone present voted on the bill.”
>
> This use of “present” is an adjective. OK.
>
> But now consider this sentence:
>
> “The Senators present voted on the bill.”
>
> This sounds okay to me. A bit non-standard but okay.
>
> What would be more standard? A relative clause:
>
> “The Senators who were present voted on the bill.”
>
> So I wonder if the real principle behind “post-positive adjectives”
> is that they’re shortcuts for not writing out a relative clause. Their
> position after the noun they modify is fine because of the following
> fact: within the relative clause they’re standing for, they were
> actually coming after a linking verb. Linking verbs define one of the
> two types of sentences and let adjectives serve in a complement position
> after the noun they modify.

I was watching Justin's video which discusses this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJqhUML14Ug

I want to analyze the sentence above with the relative clause.

> “The Senators who were present voted on the bill.”

Action verb: “voted”

Subject: “Senators”

Modifiers:

“The” is a determiner that modifies “Senators”. It answers the
question “which Senators?” It says that the sentence is about some
particular senators.

“who were present” is a relative (subordinate) clause that functions
as an adjective and modifies “Senators”. It answers the question
“which Senators?” Within the clause, “were” is the linking verb, “who”
is a pronoun and the subject, and “present” is an adjective and the
complement.

“on the bill” is a prepositional phrase that functions as an adverb
and modifies “voted”. It answers the question “for what purpose did
they vote?” or “what kind of voting?” “on” is the preposition and
“bill” is the noun. “the” is a determiner that modifies “bill”.

Question #1: Is it okay to say the relative clause functions as an
adjective? I think yes.

Question #2: I've identified two clauses. Do they need a conjunction
to join them? I think no. The relative pronoun “who” signals the
relative clause and is part of it. The relative clause is nested
inside the main clause.

I wrote the above before I searched and found the following thread,
which has some similar ideas:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/fallible-ideas/ad_txwCc2xM/cio9zlPBBQAJ

Note: Sometimes, like here, I do things I've done before or read
someone else do before and don't realize it. There may be a better way
for me to organize my grammar study.

[Justin Mallone]

Perhaps a relative clause analysis check could be incorporated to a standard list of things to check for when confused about a sentence.

I talk about four things here:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/fallible-ideas/uzypd4ImtD8/5U0Wu-nHEQAJ

#2 is " Substitute in different words for the existing ones” and I give a subtip for checking for an adverb. So relative clause substitution could be a way of checking for adjectives. You could also conceptually put it under #3 (checking for implied words). But I think the relative clause might be more “omitted" than “implied" at this point in the development of how people talk … not sure though on this point though.

So far I have 7 tips/techniques (leaning heavily on ET’s grammar article): https://fallibleideas.com/grammar

1. Rearrange the words

2. Substitute in different words for the existing ones

3. Check for implied words

4. Diagram!

5. Outline

6. Question-based analysis

7. Analyze subject/verb/object + modifiers

> I think it’s probably more common for the word in question to *not* be a standard adjective that modifies the noun preceding it.
>
> And the issue isn’t just whether the word is an adjective. “Angry” and “black” are adjectives. But they don’t have the same relationship to the noun preceding them as “useful” does in “something useful”.
>
> Also, you're suggesting that if one of the reasons I gave (i.e. needing to figure out what’s going on) doesn’t apply, then it’s not necessary to view these words as partially-omitted relative clauses. This implies that you disagree with the other reason I gave:
>
>>> One reason is that it highlights a connection between post-positive adjectives and relative clauses. This helps you better unify and organize your knowledge of “ways to pull off the adjective functionality”.
>
> Do you disagree with this? Broadly, what I’m suggesting is to not have all of these little, disparate pieces of knowledge about adjective functionality. I think it’s better to look for ways that they relate to each other, including one being a subcategory of another. So, in this case post-positive adjectives would be seen as a subcategory of relative clauses.

I think we can use the implied relative clause thing as a way to see a useful connection and understand sentences with post-positive adjectives better, but I wonder about categorizing post-positive adjectives strictly under relative clauses. Like, maybe they originated there, but people’s development of the language reaches a point where the current uses become somewhat autonomous from the origins. And knowing the origins can be useful and give you understanding and perspective on stuff, but might be more straighforward to think of post-positive stuff as basically adjectives. I honestly don’t know, I don’t have a strong opinion on it yet.

-JM