Postpositive adjective

A postpositive adjective or postnominal adjective is an adjective that is placed after the noun or pronoun that it modifies, as in noun phrases such as attorney general, queen regnant, or all matters financial. This contrasts with prepositive adjectives, which come before the noun or pronoun, as in noun phrases such as red rose, lucky contestant, or busy bees.

In some languages (Spanish, Welsh, Indonesian, etc.), the postpositive placement of adjectives is the normal syntax, but in English it is largely confined to archaic and poetic uses (e.g. "Once upon a midnight dreary", as opposed to "Once upon a dreary midnight") as well as phrases borrowed from Romance languages or Latin (e.g. heir apparent, aqua regia) and certain fixed grammatical constructions (e.g. "Those anxious to leave soon exited").^[1]

In syntax, postpositive position is independent of predicative position; a postpositive adjective may occur either in the subject or the predicate of a clause, and any adjective may be a predicate adjective if it follows a copular verb. For example: monsters unseen were said to lurk beyond the moor (postpositive attribute in subject of clause), but the children trembled in fear of monsters unseen (postpositive attribute in predicate of clause) and the monsters, if they existed, remained unseen (predicate adjective in postpositive position).

Recognizing postpositive adjectives in English is important for determining the correct plural for a compound expression. For example, because martial is a postpositive adjective in the phrase court-martial, the plural is courts-martial, the suffix being attached to the noun rather than the adjective. This pattern holds for most postpositive adjectives, with the few exceptions reflecting overriding linguistic processes such as rebracketing.