In Russian, there are several categories of adjectives: they are qualitative, relative and possessive. The former express the qualities of the object: tall, thin, wide, large, slow, red, etc. The category of quality includes adjectives denoting color, shape, character traits, physical and spatio-temporal features of the word being defined. As a rule, quality adjectives have several grammatical features that distinguish them from adjectives of other categories.
Relative adjectives most often denote the material, the composition of the object denoted by the word being defined, its temporal sign or purpose: plastic, fur, parental, tomorrow. All these features are constant, and adjectives do not form degrees of comparison and do not have other features of qualitative adjectives. Therefore, in most cases, they are quite easy to distinguish. But not always.
Finally, one morecategory - possessive adjectives expressing the belonging of the word being defined: fox fur, mother's scarf, shark tail. However, confusion can sometimes arise as it is not always easy to distinguish between possessive adjectives. Examples are illustrative: fox fur and fox coat (that is, made from fox fur), shark fin and shark steak (from shark), quite a significant difference, isn't it? Possessive adjectives can also be confused with qualitative ones, but this is rare and usually happens if the adjective is used in a figurative sense - "bear gait".
Besides, possessive adjectives (unlike adjectives of other categories) have zero endings. In the phrase "bear fur" the adjective is formed from the noun "bear" by adding the suffix "ij" and has a zero ending, and the adjectives "red", "distant" have the ending "ij". So knowing the ranks of adjectives can also help when parsing a word by composition.
In Russian English textbooks there is also some confusion about what is considered possessive adjectives, since they are traditionally studied in the topic of possessive pronouns, thus distinguishing between the relative and absolute forms of pronouns. However, in British English there is no such classification, there are only possessive pronouns and possessive adjectives, given intable below.
| Posessive adjectives |
Posessive pronouns |
||
| my | my | mine | my |
| your | your | yours | your |
| his | his | his | his |
| her | her | hers | her |
| its | his/hers | ||
| our | our | ours | our |
| your | your | yours | your |
| their | their | theirs | their |
Possessive adjectives in English are thus often referred to as the relative form of possessive pronouns, however, in fact, such a category does not exist. This was done for the convenience of studying English grammar, since in Russian these words are really pronouns.
The adjectives in this case are easy to distinguish, because they always require after themselvesnoun (i.e. my pen, his coat), while pronouns are used in grammatical constructions such as this pencil is mine, that coat is his (i.e. they are not followed by a noun). Possessive adjectives in both languages are a topic with many nuances to consider, so it's best to study it thoroughly.
