adjectivemeaning

Adjectivemeaning is the semantic content contributed by adjectives to noun phrases in natural language. It denotes the properties, attributes, or evaluative judgments that attach to nouns or pronouns and help characterize, distinguish, or evaluate entities in discourse. Adjectives can be attributive (the red apple) or predicative (the apple is red), and their meaning combines with the noun according to language-specific syntax and semantics to yield a referent with certain properties.

Categories include descriptive adjectives (color, size, shape), relational adjectives (ownership, proximity, temporal relations), and evaluative or subjective adjectives (beautiful, dangerous, efficient). Many adjectives are gradable, taking degree modifiers (very tall, somewhat old) and participating in comparative and superlative forms (taller, tallest). Others are non-gradable or context-dependent (unique, perfect).

Semantic relationships matter: intrinsic adjectives describe properties inherent to the noun (red), while relational adjectives describe a property relative to something else (old compared to a standard). Polysemy is common: "good" can mean healthy, satisfactory, or morally virtuous, affecting interpretation.

Syntax may interact with morphology, such as agreement in gender/number in certain languages, or fixed adjective order constraints when multiple adjectives modify a noun.

In computational linguistics, adjectivemeaning is central to tasks like word-sense disambiguation, sentiment analysis, and lexicon construction, since adjective meaning guides inferences about the described objects and their attributes.