Saturday, 5 October 2013

Gradable & non-gradable adjectives

Hi, guys. There you go some important facts you should know about adjectives: gradable and non-gradable
Gradable adjectives are adjectives like ‘cold’ ‘hot’ and ‘frightened’. You can be very cold or a bit cold. Gradable adjectives show that something can have different degrees. Non-gradable adjectives are adjectives like ‘married’ or ‘wooden’. You can’t be very married or a bit married. Non-gradable adjectives do not have different degrees. Adjectives like ‘terrifying’, ‘freezing’ ‘amazing’ are also non-gradable adjectives. They already contain the idea of ‘very’ in their definitions – ‘freezing’ means ‘very cold’ etc. When we use adverbs of degree to modify adjectives we usually have to use different adverbs for gradable and non-gradable adjectives. 
 NOT I’m completely hot. 
NOT It was very fantastic! 
With gradable adjectives The adverbs a bit, very, really, extremely and quite can all be used with gradable adjectives. I’m extremely tired. I’m going to bed
With non-gradable adjectives The adverbs absolutely and completely can be used with non-gradable adjectives It’s absolutely freezing in here. Shall I turn the fire on?

If you want to get some interactive practice, click here


SourceEOI Elx

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