Properties

[John Reimer]

Hello Nick,

> "John Reimer" <terminal.node at gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:28b70f8c119bd8cb4246de86cc80 at news.digitalmars.com...
> 
>> 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.
>> 
> I guess that's a difference between natural languages and
> oop-languages then. A member variable of an object typically
> /describes an attribute/ of the object, and thus makes it comparable
> to the notion of "adjective", but in an oop-language (and apperently
> unlike a natural language) that member object is itself either another
> object or a primitive.
> 


Yes, although natural languages and programming languages might share some 
similarities, natural langauges are going to be much more complex (even though 
both consist of grammars and alphabets). I know there's a whole science and 
theory of natural language analysis of which I'm mostly ignorant beyond a 
basic introduction.  Much of the research of computer languages and compilers 
seems to have borrowed from the study of natural languages (see Noam Chomsky). 
 I need to study it more myself.

Also I just want to make clear that my explanation above was meant only to 
emphasize English grammar rules.  I don't know enough about other natural 
langauges to make the statement universally applicable. There are some very 
"unusual" natural languages out there that will have a very different grammar 
such that, I suppose, they would seem to break the rules familiar to an English 
speaker.  But, of course, a different language is not subject to the rules 
of the English grammar, so it should be no surprise.

-JJR