Properties

[John Reimer]

Hello Nick,

> "John Reimer" <terminal.node at gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:28b70f8c119528cb42154f5d14e0 at news.digitalmars.com...
> 
>> 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