Attributive and Predicative Adjectives in english grammar

Attributive and Predicative Adjectives

An attributive adjective usually comes before the noun it modifies without a linking verb. For example, take this sentence from Maya Angelou's work "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings":

"In those tender mornings, the Store was full of laughing, joking, boasting, and bragging."

The word tender is an attributive adjective because it precedes and modifies the

noun mornings. Attributive adjectives are direct modifiers of nominals.

By contrast, a predicative adjective usually comes after a linking verb rather than before a noun. Another term for a predicative adjective is a subject complement. The Oxford Online Living Dictionaries gives this example:

• The cat is black.

In general, when adjectives are used after a verb such as be, become, grow, look, or seem, they’re called predicative adjectives, says the dictionary.