I have a grammar question about adjectives...

Question

A question about grammar... "Some people have four white cars." I know that white is an adjective... would "some" and "four" also be adjectives? An adjective is a word not able to stand alone, but I'm not sure if the words describing how MANY of something would be an adjective or not... Thanks!!!!

Answer 1

"Some" is how many people and "four" is how many cars.  They are adjectives in this one.  This one is tricky.

Answer 2

Your feelings are good.  "Some" and "four" are called quantifiers.  Yes, they tell you something abot the thing in question, but not a characteristics of the thing, just how many.

So, they are quantifiers, not adjectives, just as "the" is not an adjective and "a" is not an adjective.

Answer 3

Yes, "some" and "four" are adjectives. They modify the nouns "people" and "cars" respectively.

Answer 4

For many years, these were considered adjectives. Then grammarians coined a new term - determiners - and in that class put articles, demonstratives, possessives, and quantifiers.

For all practical purposes, you may still treat all these as adjectives, and those of us older than dirt will always call them adjectives.