Note that the adjectival marking for comparison is only for a greater degree. To say `my wife is less beautiful than your wife’ is only possible in the form of `your wife is more beautiful than my wife’

Adjectives, as a class, consist of all such words whose function in the language is to modify nouns. They specify value (`good’, `bad’); age (`old’, `new’); human propensities (`happy’, `sad’, `angry’, and so on); physiological states (`sleepy’, `drowsy’, `hungry’); physical properties (`light’, `sweet’, `bitter’, `ugly’); states resulting from actions (`completed’, `broken’, `full’); dimension (`small’, `big’, `long’); position and posture (`near’, `inside of’); speed (`fast’, `slow’); numerals (`one’, `two’ and a full set of derived ordinal numerals (`first’, `second’); and colour terms. The basic colour terms are abstract like `white’, `black’ and `fair’, the others being described by common nouns used adjectivally.