placement of adjective

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Pamela Kingfisher on November 30, 2009 at 1:43am

there are many adjectives when placed before the noun mean one thing, and when placed after the noun mean another. So, you have to memorize the differences.
Une grande femme. A great woman
Une femme grande. A large woman
une ancienne maison. an old house
ma maison ancienne, my former house

I am sure the natives will have a lot to say about this.
I don't recall where you put brave, but beauty age and goodness tend to come before the noun.

Pam

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on November 30, 2009 at 3:41am

Be very careful, though -- in reality the distinction isn't necessarily that clear-cut. Plus sometimes, the grammar dictates the position of the adjective, irrespective of the meaning you might expect it to have in that position.

For example, if I say c'est un homme bien brave, mais peu efficace, it's fairly clear that the meaning of brave is "decent, nice" (e.g. in English you might say "he's a nice enough chap"), even though brave comes after the noun in this case.

Actually, I think that some of the lists that you see of adjectives "changing meaning" depending on their position are more artefacts of the grammar. For example, in the case of brave, it may have more of a tendency to be qualified (e.g. brave comme un chevalier), and in that case the adjective phrase comes after the noun just because you have the phrase "comme ...". The same would happen with grand, e.g. une maison grande comme un palais. So when you see a list saying that an adjective has such-and-such a meaning when it occurs after the noun, you need to be aware that what this might really mean is "with this meaning, this adjective tends to be used more often with a phrase such as comme un... or some other grammatical reason to make it more likely to occur after the noun". Sorry, that was a long-winded explanation, I hope it sort of makes sense.

N.B. that said, for ancien to mean "former", it actually usually comes before the noun (in either position, I think it can potentially be interprted as "old, ancient").

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Pamela Kingfisher on December 1, 2009 at 5:03am

oops about ancien, thanks Neil, see, another cauchemar for your grammar page!
Pam

• ▶ Reply