A Student's Introduction to English Grammar

(^114) Chapter 6 Adjectives and adverbs

(d) Function

The attributive and predicative uses of adjectives do not provide a good test for dis­
tinguishing them from nouns because nouns can also function as attributive modi­
fiers or predicative complements. But there is a function-based test that separates
nouns from adjectives fairly well: the ability of nouns to head phrases in subject
and object position. We illustrate in [7].

[7]

N

ii ADJ

SUBJECT

The judge arrived.

*Wise arrived.

Overlap between the categories

SUBJECT

Its sjzg amazed me.

* f1jg amazed me.

OBJECT

I like silk.

*1 like smooth.

It should be borne in mind that there are a good many lexemes that belong to both
noun and adjective categories. They have the positive properties of both. One exam­
ple is cold:

'.. it can be an adjective denoting a low temperature (This soup is cold);

It can also be a noun denoting a minor illness (I caught a bad cold).

Compare, then:

[8]

INFLECTION

11 DETERMINERS

1lI MODIFIERS

iv FUNCTION

ADJECTIVE

colder, coldest

terribly cold

NOUN

colds

my cold, which cold?

a terrible cold

The cold was nasty. Don't catch a cold.

", The adjective has comparative and superlative forms while the noun has a plural.
,. The noun takes determiners as dependent.
The modifier contrast is evident in [iii], with the adjective taking an adverb and
the noun an adjective as modifier.
The noun occurs as head of a phrase in subject or object function.

The fused modifier-head constructi on

One complication in distinguishing between adjectives and nouns is that a limited
range of adjectives can appear as fused modifier-head in an NP, as described in
Ch. 5, §7. Further examples are given in [9].

[9] SIMPLE
11 PARTITIVE
III SPECIAL

Thefirst version wasn't very good but [the second] was fine.

I couldn 't afford [even the cheapest of them J.

Th is tax cut will benefit [only the rich).

Precisely because they are in head position in NP structure, the underlined words
might at first glance be thought to be nouns. But they're not nouns: they're adjec­
tives. In the simple and partitive constructions this is fairly easy to see:

Note the possibility of adding a repetition of the noun version in [i].

In [ii] we have a superlative form, cheapest, which certainly can't be a noun.