In
linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
, a modifier is an optional element in
phrase
In syntax and grammar, a phrase is a group of words or singular word acting as a grammatical unit. For instance, the English expression "the very happy squirrel" is a noun phrase which contains the adjective phrase "very happy". Phrases can consi ...
structure or
clause
In language, a clause is a constituent that comprises a semantic predicand (expressed or not) and a semantic predicate. A typical clause consists of a subject and a syntactic predicate, the latter typically a verb phrase composed of a verb with ...
structure
which ''modifies'' the meaning of another element in the structure. For instance, the
adjective
In linguistics, an adjective (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that generally grammatical modifier, modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun.
Tra ...
"red" acts as a modifier in the
noun phrase
In linguistics, a noun phrase, or nominal (phrase), is a phrase that has a noun or pronoun as its head or performs the same grammatical function as a noun. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently oc ...
"red ball", providing extra details about which particular ball is being referred to. Similarly, the
adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, determiner, clause, preposition, or sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, level of certainty, etc., answering ...
"quickly" acts as a modifier in the verb
phrase
In syntax and grammar, a phrase is a group of words or singular word acting as a grammatical unit. For instance, the English expression "the very happy squirrel" is a noun phrase which contains the adjective phrase "very happy". Phrases can consi ...
"run quickly". Modification can be considered a high-level domain of the functions of language, on par with
predication and
reference
Reference is a relationship between objects in which one object designates, or acts as a means by which to connect to or link to, another object. The first object in this relation is said to ''refer to'' the second object. It is called a ''name'' ...
.
Premodifiers and postmodifiers
Modifiers may come either before or after the modified element (the ''
head
A head is the part of an organism which usually includes the ears, brain, forehead, cheeks, chin, eyes, nose, and mouth, each of which aid in various sensory functions such as sight, hearing, smell, and taste. Some very simple animals may ...
''), depending on the type of modifier and the rules of
syntax
In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency) ...
for the language in question. A modifier placed before the head is called a premodifier; one placed after the head is called a postmodifier.
For example, in ''land mines'', the word ''land'' is a premodifier of ''mines'', whereas in the phrase ''mines in wartime'', the phrase ''in wartime'' is a postmodifier of ''mines''. A head may have a number of modifiers, and these may include both premodifiers and postmodifiers. For example:
* ''that nice tall man from Canada whom you met''
In this noun phrase, ''man'' is the head, ''nice'' and ''tall'' are premodifiers, and ''from Canada'' and ''whom you met'' are postmodifiers.
Notice that in English, simple adjectives are usually used as premodifiers, with occasional exceptions such as ''
galore'' (which always appears after the noun, coming from
Irish
Irish may refer to:
Common meanings
* Someone or something of, from, or related to:
** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe
***Éire, Irish language name for the isle
** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...
in which most adjectives are postmodifiers) or the adjectives ''
immemorial'' and ''
martial
Marcus Valerius Martialis (known in English as Martial ; March, between 38 and 41 AD – between 102 and 104 AD) was a Roman poet from Hispania (modern Spain) best known for his twelve books of ''Epigrams'', published in Rome between AD 86 and ...
'' in the phrases ''
time immemorial
Time immemorial ( la, Ab immemorabili) is a phrase meaning time extending beyond the reach of memory, record, or tradition, indefinitely ancient, "ancient beyond memory or record". The phrase is used in legally significant contexts as well as ...
'' and ''
court martial
A court-martial or court martial (plural ''courts-martial'' or ''courts martial'', as "martial" is a postpositive adjective) is a military court or a trial conducted in such a court. A court-martial is empowered to determine the guilt of memb ...
'' (the latter comes from
French
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents
** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
, where most adjectives are postmodifiers). Sometimes placement of the adjective after the noun entails a change of meaning: compare ''a responsible person'' and ''the person responsible'', or ''the proper town'' (the appropriate town) and ''the town proper'' (the area of the town as properly defined).
It is possible in English (and other languages) for a modifier to be separated from its head by other modifiers, making the phrase ''discontinuous'', as in ''The man here whom you bumped into in the street yesterday'', where the relative clause ''who...yesterday'' is separated from the word it modifies (''man'') by the modifier ''here''. In some other languages, words other than modifiers may occur in between, this type of situation is especially likely in languages with
free word order
In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how different languages employ different orders. C ...
, and often agreement between the grammatical gender, number or other feature of the modifier and its head is used to indicate the relationship. In English, modifiers may sometimes even be interposed between component words or syllables of the head, such as in
split infinitive
A split infinitive is a grammatical construction in which an adverb or adverbial phrase separates the "to" and "infinitive" constituents of what was traditionally called the full infinitive, but is more commonly known in modern linguistics as the ...
s (''to boldly go'') or
infixation
An infix is an affix inserted inside a word stem (an existing word or the core of a family of words). It contrasts with ''adfix,'' a rare term for an affix attached to the outside of a stem, such as a prefix or suffix.
When marking text for int ...
(''in-fucking-credible'').
Types
Formal types
Two common
parts of speech
In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech (abbreviated as POS or PoS, also known as word class or grammatical category) is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items) that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are assi ...
used for modification are
adjective
In linguistics, an adjective (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that generally grammatical modifier, modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun.
Tra ...
s (and
adjectival phrase An adjective phrase (or adjectival phrase) is a phrase whose head is an adjective. Almost any grammar or syntax textbook or dictionary of linguistics terminology defines the adjective phrase in a similar way, e.g. Kesner Bland (1996:499), Crystal (1 ...
s and
adjectival clause
A subordinate clause, dependent clause, subclause, or embedded clause is a clause that is embedded within a complex sentence. For instance, in the English sentence "I know that Bette is a dolphin", the clause "that Bette is a dolphin" occurs as t ...
s), which modify nouns; and
adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, determiner, clause, preposition, or sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, level of certainty, etc., answering ...
s (and
adverbial phrase
In linguistics, an ''adverbial phrase'' ("AdvP") is a multi-word expression operating adverbially: its syntactic function is to modify other expressions, including verbs, adjectives, adverbs, adverbials, and sentences. Adverbial phrases can be divi ...
s and
adverbial clause
An adverbial clause is a dependent clause that functions as an adverb. That is, the entire clause modifies a separate element within a sentence. As with all clauses, it contains a subject and predicate, though the subject as well as the (predicat ...
s), which modify other parts of speech, particularly verbs, adjectives and other adverbs, as well as whole phrases or clauses. Not all adjectives and adverbs are necessarily modifiers, however; an adjective will normally be considered a modifier when used
attributively, but not when used predicatively – compare the examples with the adjective ''red'' at the start of this article.
Another type of modifier in some languages, including English, is the
noun adjunct
In grammar, a noun adjunct, attributive noun, qualifying noun, noun (pre)modifier, or apposite noun is an optional noun that grammatical modifier, modifies another noun; functioning similarly to an adjective, it is, more specifically, a noun funct ...
, which is a noun modifying another noun (or occasionally another part of speech). An example is ''land'' in the phrase ''land mines'' given above.
Examples of the above types of modifiers, in English, are given below.
* ''It was ''
'a nice house'''.'' (adjective modifying a noun, in a noun phrase)
*
'The swiftly flowing waters''' carried it away.'' (adjectival phrase, in this case a
participial phrase
In linguistics, a participle () (from Latin ' a "sharing, partaking") is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. More narrowly, ''participle'' has been defined as "a word derived from ...
, modifying a noun in a noun phrase)
* ''She's ''
'the woman with the hat'''.'' (adjectival phrase, in this case a
prepositional phrase
An adpositional phrase, in linguistics, is a syntactic category that includes ''prepositional phrases'', ''postpositional phrases'', and ''circumpositional phrases''. Adpositional phrases contain an adposition (preposition, postposition, or circ ...
, modifying a noun in a noun phrase)
* ''I saw ''
'the man whom we met yesterday'''.'' (adjectival clause, in this case a
relative clause
A relative clause is a clause that modifies a noun or noun phraseRodney D. Huddleston, Geoffrey K. Pullum, ''A Student's Introduction to English Grammar'', CUP 2005, p. 183ff. and uses some grammatical device to indicate that one of the arguments ...
, modifying a noun in a noun phrase)
* ''His desk was in ''
'the faculty office'''.'' (noun adjunct modifying a noun in a noun phrase)
*
'Put it gently in the drawer'' (adverb in verb phrase)
* ''He was ''
'very gentle'''.'' (adverb in adjective phrase)
* ''She set it down ''
'very gently'''.'' (adverb in adverb phrase)
*
'Even more''' people were there.'' (adverb modifying a
determiner
A determiner, also called determinative (abbreviated ), is a word, phrase, or affix that occurs together with a noun or noun phrase and generally serves to express the reference of that noun or noun phrase in the context. That is, a determiner m ...
)
* ''It ran ''
'right up the tree'''.'' (adverb modifying a prepositional phrase)
*
'Only the dog''' was saved.'' (adverb modifying a noun phrase)
In some cases, noun phrases or
quantifiers can act as modifiers:
*
'A few more''' workers are needed.'' (quantifier modifying a determiner)
* ''She's ''
'two inches taller than her sister'''.'' (noun phrase modifying an adjective)
Functional types
Modifiers of all types of forms may be used for certain function with different
semantic
Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and comput ...
features. The grammar of a language determines which morpho-syntactic forms are used for which function, as it varies from language to language. The functions of modification can be grouped into five such types:
* ''Classifying modification'' further specifies the kind of a referent: e.g. ''solar energy'', ''departmental meeting''.
* ''Qualifying modificiation'' further specifies some quality of a referent: e.g. ''black cars'', ''a heavy box''.
* ''Quantifying modification'' specifies the quantity (or number/cardinality) of a referent: e.g. ''two boxes'', ''several'' cars.
* ''Localizing (or anchoring) modification'' specifies the location of a referent: e.g. ''this car, the house ''on the corner''.
* ''Discourse-referentiel modification'' specifies the status of the referent in the discourse universe: e.g. ''the/a car''.
Ambiguous and dangling modifiers
Sometimes it is not clear which element of the sentence a modifier is intended to modify. In many cases this is not important, but in some cases it can lead to genuine
ambiguity
Ambiguity is the type of meaning in which a phrase, statement or resolution is not explicitly defined, making several interpretations plausible. A common aspect of ambiguity is uncertainty. It is thus an attribute of any idea or statement ...
. For example:
*''He painted her sitting on the step.''
Here the participial phrase ''sitting on the step'' may be intended to modify ''her'' (meaning that the painting's subject was sitting on the step), or it may be intended to modify the verb phrase ''painted her'' or the whole clause ''he painted her'' (or just ''he''), meaning in effect that it was the painter who was sitting on the step.
Sometimes the element which the modifier is intended to modify does not in fact appear in the sentence, or is not in an appropriate position to be associated with that modifier. This is often considered a grammatical or stylistic error. For example:
*''Walking along the road, a vulture loomed overhead.''
Here whoever was "walking along the road" is not mentioned in the sentence, so the modifier (''walking along the road'') has nothing to modify, except ''a vulture'', which is clearly not the intention. Such a case is called a "dangling modifier", or more specifically, in the common case where (as here) the modifier is a participial phrase, a "dangling participle"
See also
*
Description
Description is the pattern of narrative development that aims to make vivid a place, object, character, or group. Description is one of four rhetorical modes (also known as ''modes of discourse''), along with exposition, argumentation, and narr ...
*
Intensifier
In linguistics, an intensifier (abbreviated ) is a lexical category (but ''not'' a traditional part of speech) for a modifier that makes no contribution to the propositional meaning of a clause but serves to enhance and give additional emotional co ...
*
Intersective modifier In linguistics, an intersective modifier is an expression which modifies another by delivering the intersection of their denotations. One example is the English adjective "blue", whose intersectivity can be seen in the fact that being a "blue pig ...
*
Privative adjective In linguistics, a privative adjective is an adjective which seems to exclude members of the extension of the noun which it modifies. For instance, "fake" is privative since a "fake nose" is not an actual nose. Other examples in English include "pre ...
*
Subsective modifier In linguistics, a subsective modifier is an expression which modifies another by delivering a subset of its denotation. For instance, the English adjective "skilled" is subsective since being a skilled surgeon entails being a surgeon. By contrast ...
References
{{Authority control
Syntactic categories
Descriptive technique