JJAT Attributive adjectives

Definition

Adjectives in prenominal position modifying a noun (e.g., “the tall man”, “dark clouds”).

Detection Rules

semgrex{pos:JJ}=adj <amod {pos:/NN.*/}

Requires: pos, dep

cql[pos="JJ"] [pos="NN|NNS|NNP|NNPS"]

Requires: pos

pybiber

pybiber uses UPOS ADJ followed by NOUN or ADJ, plus a comma-coordinated pattern (ADJ, ADJ). Excludes hyphenated adjectives.

p1
cql[upos="ADJ" & word!=".*-.*"] [upos="NOUN|ADJ"]
p2
cql[upos="ADJ" & word!=".*-.*"] [word=","] [upos="ADJ"]
combine: p1 | p2

Requires: word, pos, upos

Normalization

Per nouns

Examples

The tall man wore a dark cloak.

Ancient trees lined the narrow path through the deep forest.

Something strange had happened in the night.

I’ve got a fantastic idea!

Source: le_foll_2024

I didn’t sleep at all last night.

Source: le_foll_2024

Cheap, quick and easy fix!

“easy” is conj of “quick”, not direct amod — not detected by dep rule

Source: le_foll_2024

Non-examples

The sky was dark and the air was cold.

Sources

  • biber_1988 — Biber, Douglas (1988) : Variation across Speech and Writing
  • mfte — Le Foll, Elen & Shakir, Muhammad (2023/2025) : Multi-Feature Tagger of English (MFTE) — Python version
  • pybiber — Brown, David West & Reinhart, Alex (2026) : pybiber — Python package for linguistic feature extraction and Multi-Dimensional Analysis
  • xiao_2009 — Xiao, Richard (2009) : Multidimensional analysis and the study of world Englishes
  • bohmann_2019 — Bohmann, Axel (2019) : Variation in English Worldwide: Varieties and Genres in a Quantitative Perspective