Hello Nick,
"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.
No problem. I am not saying a word can't be /used/ as an adjective and noun
in different contexts. I'm just saying that they can't be an adjective and
noun at the same time as your first post suggested.
Grammatically, adjectives are not nouns (ever), even if the words themselves
can be used as either in independent contexts; they just modify nouns. Like
Jarett mentions, the fact that words that are adjectives in one context can
shapeshift to another part of speech (the noun) in another, is immaterial
to the definition: you just have to recognize when it happens and realize
the change that has occurred in the part of speech.
It something like how D uses the "!" prefix to instantiate a template and
in another context uses it as a logical NOT. They can't mean both at the
same time. They mean something different depending on where they are used.
-JJR
