A Study of Adjective Types and Functions in Popular Science Articles

Abstract

This study aims to analyze adjective types and functions found in popular science articles. 25 articles were randomly selected to analyze by employing the conceptual framework of adjective types in English by Khamying (2007). The findings reveal that ten types of adjectives including descriptive, proper, quantitative, numeral, demonstrative, possessive, distributive, emphasizing, exclamatory, and relative were found in the articles. The first five ranks of adjective types, which frequently used were hierarchically ordered from the descriptive adjectives (66.51%), the possessive adjectives (7.69%), the quantitative adjectives (7.57%), the demonstrative adjectives (5.26%), and the cardinal numeral adjectives (5.20%). The exclamatory adjectives were ranked as the least in use and the interrogative adjectives were not found in this study.