"John Reimer" <[email protected]> wrote in message news:[email protected]... > Hello Nick, > >> But, of course, adjectives (just like "direct/indirect objects") are >> themselves nouns. >> > > > Umm... May I make a little correction here? > Adjectives are not nouns. They are used to /describe/ nouns. > > -JJR >
Maybe there's examples I'm not thinking of, and I'm certainly no natural language expert, but consider these: "red" "ball" "red ball" By themselves, "red" and "ball" are both nouns. Stick the noun "red" in front of ball and "red" becomes an adjectve. (FWIW, "dictionary.reference.com" lists "red" as both a noun and an adjective). The only adjectives I can think of at the moment (in my admittedly quite tired state) are words that are ordinarly nouns on their own. I would think that the distinguishing charactaristic of an adjective vs noun would be the context in which it's used. Maybe I am mixed up though, it's not really an area of expertise for me.
