Unit 04: Adjectives after verbs.

Adjective After Certain Verbs

An adjective can come after some verbs, such as: be, become, feel, get, look, seem, smell, sound

Even when an adjective comes after the verb and not before a noun, it always refers to and qualifies the subject of the sentence, not the verb.

Look at the examples below: subject / verb /adjective

* Ram is English.
* Because she had to wait, she became impatient.
* Is it getting dark?
* The examination did not seem difficult.
* Your friend looks nice.
* This towel feels damp.
* That new film doesn't sound very interesting.
* Dinner smells good tonight.
* This milk tastes sour.
* It smells bad.

These verbs are "stative" verbs, which express a state or change of state, not "dynamic" verbs which express an action. Note that some verbs can be stative in one sense (she looks beautiful | it got hot), and dynamic in another (she looked at him | he got the money). The above examples do not include all stative verbs.

Note also that in the above structure (subject verb adjective), the adjective can qualify a pronoun since the subject may be a pronoun.

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Adjective Order Quiz
1 Andrea had ____________ a in her hair yesterday.
nice yellow bow / yellow nice bow / bow nice yellow
2 She lost a ______________.
small white cat / cat small white / white small cat
3 I bought_______________ oranges.
great some big / big great some / some great big
4 We met_____________ people at the conference.
very smart two / two very smart / very two smart
5 The clown was wearing a_____________ hat.
big green-yellow / big green and yellow / yellow and big green
6 The cookies that you__________________ .
smell delicious backed / backed smell delicious / delicious smell backed
7 Is it _________________?
cold getting outside / getting cold outside / getting outside cold
8 The course you are____________________ .
taking souns interesting / sounds interesting taking / interesting sounds taking
9 My uncle wore a_______________ to the wedding.
silk blue tie / tie blue silk / blue silk tie
10 Have you met that_____________ next door?
cute boy new / cute new boy / new boy cute