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I have some difficulty understanding the position of adjectives. In English I have to put the adjective before the referred name (e.g., I'm an Italian man).
In some languages (as Italian or Ancient Greek), the adjective (or another grammatical element) can have two positions:
How do you translate?
The terms seem appropriate and may be traditional for Italian grammar, but they're not standard or useful for English. Forget the terms.
In Spanish, there's a similar phenomenon, with occasional modification of form, and usually some of meaning:
The Italian case seems to be a way of ensuring a generic interpretation of the noun phrase; English normally uses articles for this, but English article use is very different from Italian.
If I've understood the distinction correctly, one might use a generic NP in English to translate; i.e,
In English, adjectives may have three different positions. But, using any adjective at any position is not possible.
1) Attributive position - before noun. Most adjectives go before noun.
Green tree
Happy girl
2) Predicative position - after verbs.
The tree is green.
The girl is happy.
3.Postpositive - after nouns.
After certain nouns:
Two meters tall
Two kilometers wide
Some fixed expressions:
Court martial
Heir apparent
If there is an superlative adjective modifying noun, adjectives ending in -able / -ible may come after that noun.
worst choice imaginable
the best hotel available
Some adjectives can be used both at "attributive" or "predicative" position. E.g;
Happy girl
The girl is happy.
Some adjectives may have different meaning when used attributively and/or predicatively. E.g;
My friend is poor.
My poor friendRobin Harris was late.
The late Robin Harris
Some adjectives, such as afraid, alive, alone can only be used at predicative position. E.g;
John is alone.
This is is the old problem of “May I introduce you to mi bonita esposa or to mi esposa bonita?” Or if you prefer French, to ma jolie femme vs ma femme jolie.
Like Latin, Spanish (and to a lesser extent the other Romance tongues) use flexible word order where in English we use speech stress. You can only rarely use inversion in English for this, such as to good men and true. It doesn’t fit into normal speech as it does in Romance. Sometimes, though, the most important thing you can put at the front of the sentence, like that.
I think in English we would have to introduce someone to your pretty wife or to your pretty wife, setting the emphasized word in italic. That’s a bit bludgeoning, though, so a careful writer will seek a way to do this without resorting to italic wherever possible. It isn’t always possible though, so we go for the italic in print, or to an underline in manuscript.
I don't think I really need an "authoritative source" on this one, so here's Rob's English Blog:
Usually in English adjectives, or describing words, come before the noun:
In order to put the adjective after the noun, you need to make a clause of some kind:
However, look out for cases in English where the adjective comes after the noun. These are sometimes called participle adjectives. Look at these examples:
Notice that the adjective comes after the noun. It does not work before the noun. In these sentences, the relative clause is omitted and the participle becomes an adjective:
As Rob's blog goes on to say, some adjectives can go before or after the noun in certain constructions (note that this doesn't significantly affect the meaning):
...but this doesn't apply in OP's case, where good can only go before the noun. Any difference in meaning will have to be conveyed by using more words.
