Adjectives that denote quality have been semanticaly and universally clasified  in 7 types by  Dixon (1982).

a. dimension - long, thin

b. physical property - soft, sweet

c. color - black, red

d. human propensity - happy, clever

e. age - new, old

f. value - good, proper

g. speed - fast, slow

 I employed this classification to study adjective in Spanish and the results were very satisfactory which allowed us to validate Dixon’s proposal. It is the best.

Can you explain what you mean by "group[ing] adjectives like nouns"?

Is this semantic grouping? If so you can talk about number, colour, size, scale, quality etc, otherwise it would be great if you can clarify.

Yes Mr Samuel I want to semantically group the adjectives  to groups as you have mentioned.  

Thank you

Hi,

Hope the attached helps.

Patent Extraction and grouping of feature words

Namaskaar,

Try grouping adjectives by the relatively intrinsic quality of the modified noun to which they refer, as revealed in English by pre-nominal adjective-stacking rules which are sensitive to this semantic feature, e.g.:

the sly old Tamil street-musician

NOT

*the old sly Tamil street-musician

*the Tamil sly old street-musician

*the sly Tamil old street-musician

...

...

Notice also that adjectives expressed in predicative position are not similarly constrained.

Incidentally, should you know or know of any other language with a rule that is sensitive to this alleged feature of adjectives, your kindness in pointing it out would be appreciated and your contribution credited in future work of mine on this quaint and curious question.

True regards,

J.F.

Quebec City

If we know your purpose, you would get better ideas on how you can group them. Right now, I can think of quite too many to write them down.

Joel Finley provides a good starting point.  Do it by pairs first, though.  Having come to groupings, you can look for syntactic/semantic features within each group.  Starting from the semantic end is a non-starter:  an infinite set of possible features, and the choice of which to use may be arbitrary.

Adjectives that denote quality have been semanticaly and universally clasified  in 7 types by  Dixon (1982).

a. dimension - long, thin

b. physical property - soft, sweet

c. color - black, red

d. human propensity - happy, clever

e. age - new, old

f. value - good, proper

g. speed - fast, slow

 I employed this classification to study adjective in Spanish and the results were very satisfactory which allowed us to validate Dixon’s proposal. It is the best.

In cognitive linguistics, it makes sense to distinguish semantic domains for open-class words, incl. adjectives. In my version (Spaces, Domains, and Meaning, 2004), there are four universal basic semantic domains: D1, physical; D2, social, D3, mental; D4, performative (speech-act like). So we get: D1 adjectives incl. the metric  and other descriptive adj.; D2 social adj. incl. ethnic, national, political…; D3 adj. incl. emotional; D4 adj. incl. evaluatives. Higher order domains yield higher order adjectival meanings.

The sly old Tamil street-musician  :  D3 (sly)-D1 (old) D2 (Tamil)–[D1 (street-) D2 (musician)]

The good old days : D3 - D1 - [X] and so on. Some languages have D-dependent  peri-nominal adjectival word order.

The broadest division is qualifiers and quantifiers (vide Otto Jespersen, ''Essentials of English Grammar,' London: George Allen & Unwin, 1960 rerint, p.67.). Or you may opt for: attributive and predicative, and furthermore possessive adjectives (also called pronomnal) and,participal (P.De Sarkar, ' A Text-book of Higher English Grammar,' Calcuttta: P Ghosh & Co. 1966, pp.27-28,35,69-70) 

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One method I have used with some success is to discuss adjectives as a way to clarify meaning and specificity in both writing and speech--especially writing. Normally, this in connection with avoiding more general nouns. Thus "furniture" should be replaced with "chair". "Chair" then becomes "brown leather chair" which in turn becomes "the old, brown leather chair in Professor Jones' office". Syntax matters such as the ordering of adjectives and adjectival phrases are usually corrected in context of errors.

My students at a Chinese university respond well to this but they tend to have had years of previous instruction and I do not deal with beginning learners.

You may like to see Bloom's taxonomy and its customization in outcome based learning. I hope it helps!

You may consult any French grammar; the division of adjectives into demonstrative, interrogative, possessive, and verbal (present and past participles). See Mathurin Dondo, Modern French Course, London: George G. Harrap, 1956 (Index) ..