On 2015-Mar-16 5:42 PM, Fred Ridder wrote:
Yes, there are restrictive [and non-restrictive] adjectives, which is
what I assume you are referring to as "limiting adjectives" (a term I
failed to find in any of my handy grammar/linguistics references).
But I don't think that's what we are dealing with here in the
non-possessive case, because I don't believe we're dealing with
adjectives at all.
Most people remember that adjectives modify nouns, but forget that
they are not the *only* things that modify nouns. In some cases verbs
modify nouns (e.g., the sitting president), and in many cases --
particularly in technical writing -- nouns modify nouns. Nouns that
modify nouns are referred to as "attributive nouns" or "noun
adjuncts". They almost always appear before the noun they modify (an
attributive or prepositive position) and they typically identify a
property or attribute of the noun that follows rather than directly
modifying the noun itself.
The classical example of an attributive noun phrase in English is
"chicken soup". Both words are nouns, but it is undeniable that the
first noun modifies our understanding of what the second noun
represents. Exactly what the relationship is varies widely; the second
noun could be made from the first (e.g., chicken soup), intended for
the first (e.g., user manual), composed of the first (e.g., butterfly
migration), dependent on the first (e.g., church wedding) -- basically
any semantic relationship other than simple possession by. And you can
string a bunch of them together without any of the usual concerns
about commas in adjective series. (E.g., The chicken soup tureen ladle
handle was covered with schmaltz.)
Both "user manual" and "butterfly migration" fit this pattern. Both
"user" and "butterfly" are nouns that modify the sense of the nouns
that follow them. And they are unlike adjectives because they cannot
be used predicatively.
-FR
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