Adjectives are divided into three categories: qualitative, possessive and relative. All of them play the role of a definition in a sentence. They also have non-permanent signs that are necessarily indicated during morphological analysis: number, gender and case.
Material of manufacture, spatial or temporal signs, relation to any community indicate relative adjectives. Examples: banana paradise (material), southwest wind (space), yesterday's bread (time), popular voice (community).
These signs are not considered from a quantitative point of view, therefore, they do not have degrees of comparison. There can't be a banana palm "more banana" or, even more so, "very banana" or "very banana"!
Relative adjectives are formed from nouns. For example: pistachios - pistachio, oilcloth - oilcloth, autumn - autumn, one hand - one-armed. But sometimes, in the process of substantiation, they pass into the category of nouns: a military man - a military man, a Russian man - Russian, a bathroom - a bathroom, a children's room - a nursery. However, even in this case, they are inclined according to the principle of adjectives.
It should be noted that relative adjectives cannot form a short form. "Wooden" from "wooden", "plums" from "plum", "rustic" from "rustic" - these words can only exist in the speech of a joker who decides to "play" with his tongue, distorting it.
Relative adjectives do not combine with adverbs, including the word "very". Everyone agrees that the phrases "very pistachio", "very doggy" or "too windowy" sound ridiculous and even funny.
Today, many comedians successfully “beat” these features of Russian speech, inventing phrases like: “No, my fate will be more dog-like than yours!” or “Well, a very Russian man! The most Russian of all the most Russians!”
Another distinguishing feature that relative adjectives have is the absence of antonyms. And what antonyms (words with the opposite meaning) can the words “feline” or “table”, “electric” or “January” have?
If someone chooses the antonym "dog" for the adjective "cat", then this can only be considered a funny but unsuccessful joke. After all, both dogs and cats are just animals that sometimes quarrel. But their quarrels are not a law at all, so these adjectives cannot be called antonyms. It is also impossible to define the antonym “June” or “May” to the adjective “January”, it is also stupid to try to name the words “wooden” and “iron” as antonyms.
It should be noted such a feature of the Russian language as the mobility of the boundaries between lexico-grammatical ranks of adjectives. That is, relative adjectives can turn into possessive or qualitative ones in a certain context.
An example would be the word "dog". In combination with the noun "pack" it remains in the category of relative adjectives, with the word "ears" it already turns into a possessive one, and the phrase "dog life" is the best indication of the quality of this very life …
Here are the main features of this category of adjectives.
