relational adjective

relational adjective (plural relational adjectives)

1. (grammar) An adjective that defines a relation and not a qualification.

   In some languages, a noun cannot modify another noun by being placed right next to it (like an adjective); for such languages a noun might have a corresponding relational adjective (obtained from the noun by some morphological adjustment) which can modify another noun. For example, in the English expression architectural heritage, "architectural" does not refer to a property or quality; it expresses a relationship to the corresponding noun "architecture". For languages which do allow direct adjective-like modification of a noun by another noun, they might have relational adjectives anyway, for example, due to borrowing them from the former type of languages.