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169
I consider what he did awful.
The fruits were picked ripe.
The windows were flung
open.
subjective predicatives
Adjectives may be used parenthetically, conveying the attitude of the speaker to the contents of the sentence
(strange, funny, curious, odd, surprising), often premodified by more or most.
Strange, it was the same person.
Most incredible, he deceived us.
A certain type of exclamatory sentence is based on adjectives, often modified by other words: How good of
you! How wonderful! Excellent! Just right!
Substantivized adjectives
§ 213. Substantivized adjectives may fall into several groups, according to their meaning and the nominal
features they possess.
1. Some substantivized adjectives have only the singular form. They may have either the singular or plural
agreement, depending on their meaning. These are:
a) substantivized adjectives denoting generalized or abstract notions.
They are used with the definite article and have singular agreement:
the fabulous, the unreal, the invisible:
The fabulous is always interesting.
There are, however, certain exceptions. Substantivized adjectives denoting abstract notions may sometimes
be used in the plural. Then no article is used:
There are many variables and unknowns.
b) substantivized adjectives denoting languages are used without a determiner, but are often modified by a
pronoun. They also have singular agreement.
My Spanish is very poor.
He speaks excellent English.
c) substantivized adjectives denoting groups of persons or persons of the same nationality are used with the
definite article the and admit only of plural agreement the old, the poor, the rich, the blind, the dumb and deaf,
the mute, the eminent, the English.
He did not look an important personage, but the eminent rarely do.
The poor were robbed of their lands.
2. Some substantivized adjectives have the category of number, that is they can have two forms - the
singular and the plural. These are:
a) substantivized adjectives denoting social rank or position, military ranks, party, creed, gender, nationality,
race, groups of people belonging to certain times or epochs, etc. In the plural the use of the article is not
obligatory: nobles, equals, superiors, inferiors, commercials, domestics, privates, regulars, ordinaries,
marines, Christians, primitives, moderns, ancients, contemporaries, liberals, conservatives, Europeans,
Asiatics, Eurasians, Indians, Easterns, blacks, whites, etc.
When denoting an individual such words are used in the singular and are preceded by the indefinite article: a
noble, a private, a regular, an ordinary, a Christian, a primitive, a liberal, etc.