adjective v/s adverb

Question

Can you please tell me what is fewer,less, intelligent and students in sentence 1 and 2. which ones are adjectives, nouns and adverbs ?

fewer is modifying intelligent students in sentence 1 but ajectives dont modify adjectives and only adverbs are suppose to modify adjectives...since noun in sentence 1 is students and intelligent is adjective ...

similarly in sentence 2 .

1. My class has fewer intelligent students.
2. My class has less intelligent students.

sudish · Answer

Hi

You might want to keep the following rule in mind regarding the use of fewer and less.

Rule
'Less' is used with uncountable nouns. E.g. - less water, less happiness, less money, etc.

'Fewer' is used with countable nouns. E.g. - fewer cards, fewer people, fewer companies, etc.

Now, coming back to your question:
In sentence 1, 'fewer' is modifying 'intelligent students' and not just the adjective 'intelligent'. Hence it's basically saying that I have fewer number of intelligent students in my class (say 2 out of 10 students)

In sentence 2, 'less' is only modifying the adjective 'intelligent' and is basically saying that students in my class have a lower intelligence level in general.

This is a perfect example of how the meaning of a sentence changes when you actually think that both the sentences sound/mean same.

Hope this is helpful.

Cheers!

siddhans · Answer

Sudish,

I know the difference between fewer and less but can you explain in sentence 1 if 'fewer' is modifying 'intelligent students'

than fewer should be an adverb correct and not an adjective since adjectives cant modify adjectives ?

Also, in sent 2 'less' is only modifying the adjective 'intelligent' so less should be an adverb too , right for the same reason ?

ksp · Answer

Hey,

less is an adverb modifying Intelligent.

Here our intention is to stress on the amount of intelligence.

But fewer is an adjective. This is because our intention is to modify the noun students. Our intention is to notify the readers that the number of students are few. So we take the adjective route.

So it depends on the meaning.

sudish · Answer

In the first sentence, 'fewer' is an adjective since it is modifying the noun 'students' even though it appears before the word 'intelligent' which is another adjective. As I had mentioned earlier, this is because it means to quantify the number of students in the class who are intelligent.

However, in the second sentence, 'less' modifies the adjective 'intelligent' and hence is an adverb. As mentioned, this sentence aims to tell you that the students in the class have a lower intelligence level in general.

Hope this answers the specific question you had in mind?

Cheers!

VerbalBot · Answer

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adjective v/s adverb

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