This leads to a common type of mistake: using an adverb when what you want is a predicate adjective. But as we’ve seen, adjectives don’t need to be right next to nouns in order to modify them they can do so from after a linking verb in a sentence, as predicate adjectives.
Many of us learned in school that adjectives modify nouns and that adverbs modify verbs. In the second sentence, you wouldn’t say “No one could open the silver old locket.” You can’t reverse the order of the adjectives because silver locket is a unit that is modified by old. Woolen sweater forms a unit of meaning that is modified by tattered.Īnother way to test for coordinate adjectives is to try switching the order of the adjectives and seeing if the phrase still works.
It’s a woolen sweater inherently, and it has become tattered. In the first sentence above, “this tattered and woolen sweater” doesn’t sound right, because you really aren’t talking about a sweater that is both tattered and woolen in the same way. Try inserting the word and between the adjectives to see if the phrase still seems natural. But there are a couple of ways you can test them. In some cases, it’s pretty hard to tell whether two adjectives are coordinate or not.
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