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Hello everyone,
I have a question that I was unable to answer today.

Adjectives go before a noun. However when it's a question why can the adjective go after a noun?

For example:
Is your teacher Australian? (teacher is a noun and Australian is an adjective, it doesn't follow the rule).

Instead: Are you a good student? (this seems to follow the rule of adjective before a noun)

I'd really appreciate a simple clear explanation.

Thank you in advance.

In the example: is your teacher Australian?
this is an inversion of the sentence: your teacher is Australian. Hence the position of the adjective.

Susan

Thank you for your answer. However, wouldn't it be better to explain to a beginner student that as there is a possessive adjective (your) in the question form, the adjective always goes after the noun?
Carol

that would be incorrect because you can say: your Australian teacher.

Is your Australian teacher good? contains two adjectives.

Thank you for the answer and for correcting my mistake. Is there a rule that I can find on the internet regarding adjectives in 'an inversion of the sentence'?
I can write examples on the board but they would require a rule to understand when to use it.

It's not the adjectives that are inverted; the verb and subject are inverted. The adjective stays in place:

Your teacher is Australian. Your teacher = subject / is = verb / Australian = adj.
so you have: subj / verb / adj in an affirmative phrase.
Is your teacher Australian?
Here you have: verb / subject / adjective because it is a question.

Your Australian teacher is excellent.
Is your Australian teacher excellent?

Hope that helps!

Thank you for clarifying.

you're welcome; happy to help

Thank you for your answer. However, wouldn't it be better to explain to a beginner student that as there is a possessive adjective (your) in the question form, the adjective always goes after the noun?
Thanks

Susan wrote:In the example: is your teacher Australian?
this is an inversion of the sentence: your teacher is Australian. Hence the position of the adjective.

Susan

jenifferhomes, Susan had already explained your question. In the example, the adjctive doesn't go after the noun.

Great job Susan.

I think that we have to be cateful with "what-comes-first-and-what-comes-second" rules, especially if we want students to come up with them. The students, at least mine, tend to think not in terms of "before" and "after" but 1st, 2nd, 3rd position in a sentence. It can be misleading. They all know the SVO word order, but when it comes to questions, for example, there are poblems. I often hear that in questions the verb is first. When I ask about wh- questions they say: "Ok, sometimes the verb is second." Then I have to go through a series of examples to make them realise it's "before the subject" is what they're looking for.

I agree, cerealkillah. However, we are talking about positions of adjectives and there are. I have copied the following from http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/adjectives
"Positions of adjectives
Most adjectives can be used in two positions: attributive adjectives occur before the noun they describe, while predicative adjectives are used after certain verbs:
a black cat - attributive
The cat was black. - predicative "

Therefore, the above example - "Are you a good student?" is the question form for "You are a good student." - attributive, while "Is your teacher Australian?" is the question form for "Your teacher is Australian." - predicative.

You are absolutely right, Syl. That was just my remark about explaining the word order. Not first, second, third but before, after, between and so on.

Oh! got it! I hadn't noticed your point, cereal! I have this problem, too. Pupils feel the need to understand word order in the sentences as if the words were numbered. We are saying the same thing as a matter of fact...

Hi all,

Great discussion! Sorry to be late to the party. There have been many interesting comments about the class of words being used (adjectives, nouns, verbs, adverbs, etc.) but I like to think of the problem in terms of grammatical function. While the adjective "Australian" could be the classifier of a noun group as in "an Australian teacher" it can also be the attribute of a relational process such as "the teacher is Australian."

As classifier, the adjective is premodifier to the head noun "teacher" and as attribute it is complement to the carrier of "Australianness". In this way, I find functional labels to be very useful in addition to class labels.

Thank You!