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With the adjective as a modifier in a noun phrase, the adjective and the noun typically receive equal stress (a black bird), but in a compound, the adjective typically takes primary word stress (a blackbird). Only a small set of English adjectives function in this way: [37] The colour words black, blue, brown, green, grey, red, and white
An adjective (abbreviated adj.) is a word that describes or defines a noun or noun phrase.Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives are considered one of the main parts of speech of the English language, although historically they were classed together with nouns. [1]
As an attributive noun (acting as an adjective) to refer to a specific place named Buffalo, such as the city of Buffalo, New York; As the verb to buffalo , meaning (in American English [ 1 ] [ 2 ] ) "to bully, harass, or intimidate" or "to baffle"; and
Adjective phrases containing complements after the adjective cannot normally be used as attributive adjectives before a noun. Sometimes they are used attributively after the noun , as in a woman proud of being a midwife (where they may be converted into relative clauses: a woman who is proud of being a midwife ), but it is wrong to say * a ...
In noun phrases such as the boy actor, words like boy do not fall neatly into the categories noun or adjective. Boy is more like an adjective than a noun in that it functions as a pre-head modifier of a noun, which is a function prototypically filled by adjective phrases, and in that that it cannot be pluralized in this position (*the boys actor).
The earliest use of the word clause in Middle English is non-technical and similar to the current everyday meaning of phrase: "A sentence or clause, a brief statement, a short passage, a short text or quotation; in a ~, briefly, in short; (b) a written message or letter; a story; a long passage in an author's source."
Noun classes form a system of grammatical agreement. A noun in a given class may require: agreement affixes on adjectives, pronouns, numerals, etc. in the same noun phrase, agreement affixes on the verb, a special form of pronoun to replace the noun, an affix on the noun, a class-specific word in the noun phrase.
In Chomsky's 1970 [±V, ±N] analysis, words with the feature "plus noun" that are not verbs "minus verb", are predicted to be nouns, while words with the feature "plus verb" and "minus noun" would be verbs. Following from this, when a word has both characteristics of nouns and verbs we get adjectives.