Re: FAQ 2.5 quibble


In article <edm9u3$9t61@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "Philip Potter" <philip.potter@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:

"By the way, the word ``arithmetic'' as used in the title of this section is
an adjective, not a noun, and it's pronounced differently than the noun: the
accent is on the third syllable."

While I think this is a valid point of view, I tend to think of "arithmetic"
in "arithmetic operators" as being a noun modifier[1] - a convenient way of
saying "the operators of arithmetic".

In English, the conventional term for "noun modifier" is "adjective".

[1] Similar to "baseball bat", "milk float", or "chicken feed". No
adjectives here!

Except for "baseball", "milk", and "chicken", all of which are
adjectives there. Some grammarians might say those are compound
nouns formed from noun phrases consisting of an adjective and a
noun, but at the word level there are still adjectives there.

In English, part-of-speech is contextual, not inherent in the word.
An English word is as it does. While "arithmetic" may most often
serve as a noun, it is perfectly capable of being an adjective when
placed in the syntactic position of an adjective - ie, when modifying
a noun or noun phrase.

In some other languages, part-of-speech is not (entirely) contextual,
for example because of inflection. In Japanese, for example, true
adjectives must have particular endings according to declension; a
noun might serve gramatically as an adjective but is technically an
"adjectival noun". (There are many Japanese words, typically loan-
words from Chinese dialects, that are usually adjectival nouns.)

So I'd have to argue that the FAQ remains correct, insofar as part
of speech goes. Whether it's correct about pronunciation is less
clear, that being a matter of dialect and convention.

--
Michael Wojcik michael.wojcik@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Unfortunately, as a software professional, tradition requires me to spend New
Years Eve drinking alone, playing video games and sobbing uncontrollably.
-- Peter Johnson
.

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