SPANISH 406
Adjective Placement

GENERAL PRINCIPLES

Descriptive adjectives in Spanish sometimes precede and sometimes follow the noun they modify. Statistically, descriptive adjectives follow their nouns more often than they precede them, but they precede with a frequency that is high enough to make their correct placement a problem for the native speaker of English. The choice of adjective position sometimes depends on subtle stylistic choices or psychological nuances on the part of the speaker or writer. It can also depend on the mode of language usage: colloquial spoken, formal spoken, casual written, terse or formulaic written, newspaper, realistic prose, lyrical prose, lyrical poetry. The position of Spanish descriptive adjectives in the word order is not, therefore, a problem that can be solved through reference to quasi-algebraic formulas in the manner of prepositional or copulative constructions.

Even so, there are certain principles at work in Spanish syntax that tend to define the position of descriptive adjectives, and to provide criteria for their placement. These principles are not absolute rules for adjective placement; their influence on a given usage will be conditioned by the linguistic environment of that usage, and the placement indicated by one criterion may contradict the placement indicated by another. They should be understood as pressures that come to bear on a descriptive adjective and tend to push it to one position or the other.

The major principles that influence the placement of descriptive adjectives are the following:

PRECEDES                                                  FOLLOWS

Synthesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Analysis

Enhancement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Differentiation

Rhetorical meaning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Literal meaning

Old information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  New information

Taken for granted . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Controversial

Understated . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Emphatic

Subjective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Objective

Lyrical tone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Prosaic tone

One of a kind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Selection from multiple possibilities

Intangible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Physical

Common . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Unusual

Conventional . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Unconventional

Universal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Technical

Short . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Long

ADJECTIVE MOBILITY

Some descriptive adjectives have more mobility than others. While some are almost surely destined to follow their noun in the word order, others move with ease from one position to the other. The adjectives that belong to this latter group are those that have a high frequency of usage and are found in the vocabulary of all native speakers of Spanish. They are non-technical in nature, easily susceptible to subjective interpretation, and therefore have a broad semantic spectrum. They tend to be adjectives that exist in binary pairs. Some examples of highly mobile Spanish adjectives are bueno, malo, viejo, nuevo, pobre, rico, grande, pequeño, alto, bajo, triste, alegre, simple, único, puro, diferente. Remember that some of these adjectives apocopate when they precede the noun  (e.g., bueno > buen, grande > gran).

MEANING CHANGE

We are sometimes told that the "meaning" of an adjective varies according to its position relative to the noun it modifies. This notion must be treated with care and a certain skepticism. Consider the following pairs of sentences:

        1. (a) Pepe es un triste empleado.
             (b) Pepe es un empleado triste.

        2. (a) Mi amigo es un alto oficial del ejército.
             (b) Mi amigo es un oficial alto.

        3. (a) Hilario es un pobre hombre.
             (b) Hilario es un hombre pobre.

A conventional reading of the second sentence of each pair would tell us that the qualities of sadness, height, and poverty are to be understood more or less at face value. They have been appended to the nouns they modify, are not essential to those nouns, and presumably represent only one of many qualities that might be attributed to each of these nouns. Syntactically, these adjectives could be replaced with any adjective that could conceivably modify the nouns in question (guapo, feo, amable, incompetente, corrupto, veterano, etc.).

The (a) sentences, however, are more complicated. In 1(a) the adjective triste would presumably refer not to Pepe's emotional state but to his lot in life as interpreted by someone else, and it would probably be translated as "pitiful" or "insignificant". In 2(a), alto probably refers to my friend's position in the institutional hierarchy, not his physical stature. The pobre of 3(a) has no relation to Hilario's bank account; it indicates, rather, someone's negative assessment of his character, competence, or significance as a human being.

It is in this sense that one may speak of a difference in "meaning" of the adjectives in each of the pairs of sentences. But this difference is highly relative. Whether triste, alto, and pobre precede or follow their noun, the qualities of sadness, height, and poverty are always present in some form. What will vary is the exact nature of these qualities, and their role in the sentence's statement. When they follow the noun, these adjectives clearly modify the noun by directly endowing it with one quality (triste, alto, pobre) and implicitly excluding the opposite quality (alegre, bajo, rico). But in the (a) sentences the modification attaches to the noun in a less direct and more diffuse way, because what is being modified is not so much the individual embodied in the noun as some other, more abstract reality that is present in the linguistic environment. Precisely because this secondary reality is abstract rather than physical and tangible, the quality projected by the adjective is also more abstract and less precise.

Thus, rather than a change in "meaning", preplacement of a mobile descriptive adjective tends to produce a shift in perspective, and in the relationship between the adjective and its noun. The essential quality represented by the adjective is still present in the sentence, but it becomes less literal, more diffuse, and more metaphorical because it is being attached not only to the noun that it purports to modify, but also to an abstract concept associated with that noun.

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