On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 11:02 PM, Nick Sabalausky <[email protected]> wrote: > > 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.
That "red" can be used as both a noun and as an adjective is just a coincidence. Well, it's not entirely coincidental - there are many adjectives which have been nominalized like this. Some other languages (like Spanish) allow you to use an adjective as a noun, in which case it's like saying "<adjective> one" i.e. "el gordo" = "the fat [one]". In English, though, that process is far from productive. Consider the adjectives "sleepy", "hard", or "loud". There are of course nominalized forms of these - sleepiness, hardness, loudness - but they're separate words.
