It's important to distinguish between how adjectives function within a sentence. Here's a breakdown of attributive and distributive adjectives:
Attributive Adjectives:
* Definition:
* An attributive adjective is an adjective that directly modifies a noun and precedes it.
* Essentially, it's an adjective that "attributes" a quality to the noun.
* Placement:
* Attributive adjectives are typically placed before the noun they modify.
* Examples:
* "a red car"
* "the tall building"
* "a beautiful flower"
* In each of these examples, the adjectives "red," "tall," and "beautiful" directly describe the nouns that follow them.
Distributive Adjectives:
* Definition:
* Distributive adjectives refer to individual members of a group. They consider those members separately, rather than as a whole.
* Common Distributive Adjectives:
* "each"
* "every"
* "either"
* "neither"
* Function:
* They are used to show that the adjective applies to individual items within a group.
* Examples:
* "Each student received a prize."
* "Every person has their own opinion."
* "You can choose either option."
* "Neither answer is correct."
* In these sentences, "each," "every," "either," and "neither" distribute the action or quality among the individual members of the group.
Key Differences:
* Attributive adjectives describe the qualities of a noun.
* Distributive adjectives specify how a quality or action is distributed among the members of a group.
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