1.1. Changeable weather: word formation of adjectives

word formation: adjectives
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Actividad de lectura

The man who told his experience in unit 3 said he was a forgetful boy. Tom remembers almost everything he said, so, he is not a forgetful man. He has an excellent memory. In fact, he needs to have a good memory to be able to memorize all the names, significant dates and historical data he has to remember for his exams at the University. The programme on TV in which that man told his story was about natural hazards which have caused terrible natural disasters.
 
He remembers, for example, other natural hazards that occurred on December 26, 2004 when a tsunami struck Thailand killing about 230,000 people; or the massive earthquake that hit San Francisco in the early 20th century, back in 1906, and in which between 225,000 and 300,000 people out of a population of 410,000 were left homeless.
 
 San Francisco 1906 earthquake

Imagen de Lester C. Guernsey en Wikimedia Commons. Public domain
He is convinced that, if not for all, global warming is responsible for some of the natural hazards occurred in the last fifty years, although it cannot be proved. In any case, it is a job for scientists.

Tom is ready to visit the city now.
 
forgetful - excellent - significant - historical - natural - terrible - massive - early - homeless - global - responsible - ready
 

All the adjectives in the box are formed by adding a suffix to the verb or the noun becoming derivatives. Try to separate the suffix from the stem of the word.

Suffixes to create adjectives

As you know, a suffix is a morpheme that is placed after the stem of a word to form a new word (derivative), quite frequently, of a different grammatical category (a noun, a verb, an adjective or an adverb). Click on the picture on the right to get some of the most frequently-used suffixes in English to form adjectives.

SuffixesImagen de mrmayo en Flickr bajo licencia CC

Para saber más

Now, it's time to practice. Click here to do an easy activity to form adjectives. More exercises to improve your knowledge on forming adjectives by means of suffixes can be done not only by clicking here, but also here.

Do the following exercises for more practice:

 

Rellenar huecos

Fill in the blanks with a suitable adjective from the word between brackets. Remember that -ed and -ing are also suffixes to form present and past participial adjectives!

1. Tom thinks that global warming is responsible for and (nature; environment) disasters.

2. A huge earthquake caused the (dread) tsunami in Thailand in 2004.

3. It was a (pity) sight to see all those people floating after the tsunami.

4. The earthquake in San Francisco was (catastrophe).

5. It is (logic) that people in (coast) Thailand are (frighten) of tsunamis.

2004 Indonesia Tsunami complete

Imagen de Vasily V. Titov en Wikimedia Commons. Public domain

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Importante

Attributive vs Predicative adjectives

Most of the adjectives seen up to now may function attributively or predicatively. Do you know the difference between them? If you don't, don't worry, it's very easy!

Attributive adjectives in English are those adjectives that are placed in front of a noun (e.g. Paco is not a forgetful man).

Predicative adjectives, on the other hand, are those adjectives that are placed after the verb, normally a copula verb such as to be (e.g. He was very forgetful when he was a child). That is, it is part of the predicate of the sentence.
Why don't you relax a little bit and listen to the song in the video to see the difference between subject and predicate? If you want to get the lyrics of the song, click here.

REMEMBER: Adjectives in English never take the plural!!!!

Writing

Imagine you are asked to tell an experience related to a natural hazard you experienced when you were a child. Write a short paragraph telling your experience and how it ended.
Remember to use a dictionary if you need help with vocabulary.

Writing

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That's all for now about word-formation of adjectives in English. We will study the order of adjectives in attributive position in unit 6, lesson 1!