Is "breakfast" an adjective here?
"I'm not really a breakfast person."
"I'm not really a breakfast person."
breakfast
It's not an adjective. Here's how you know. You can't say the following:
*I'm a person who's not very breakfast.
*Some people are breakfaster than me.
Hence it's not an adjective.
*I'm a person who's not very breakfast.
*Some people are breakfaster than me.
Hence it's not an adjective.
It's an attributive noun (which I think is what Damian meant). It implies some sort of association with or affinity for breakfast - so the speaker is saying that they don't like breakfast or don't consider it important.
<It's an attributive noun (which I think is what Damian meant). It implies some sort of association with or affinity for breakfast - so the speaker is saying that they don't like breakfast or don't consider it important. >
Why is an atrributive noun different fro a normal noun? Does that mean that there are many more parts of speech than we think?
Why is an atrributive noun different fro a normal noun? Does that mean that there are many more parts of speech than we think?
An attributive noun modifies another noun. Look at phrases like "breakfast person", "dinosaur bones", "chicken soup". In each case, the first noun is acting as a modifier. (Unlike an adjective, an attributive noun has no comparative or superlative forms: you can't say that this soup is "more chicken" than other soups, or that these bones are "the most dinosaur".)
***Guest Mon Jul 09, 2007 3:41 pm GMT
What is SW15? ***
It's a postal district /post code area, suburb, of South West London - the area is called Putney, in the London Borough of Wandsworth. It's at Putney Bridge, on the River Thames here, that the annual Oxford v Cambridge uni boat race starts off on its 4 mile run up stream to Mortlake. I'm here until early September....maybe, just maybe later.
http://www.putneysw15.com/
What is SW15? ***
It's a postal district /post code area, suburb, of South West London - the area is called Putney, in the London Borough of Wandsworth. It's at Putney Bridge, on the River Thames here, that the annual Oxford v Cambridge uni boat race starts off on its 4 mile run up stream to Mortlake. I'm here until early September....maybe, just maybe later.
http://www.putneysw15.com/
>>An attributive noun modifies another noun. Look at phrases like "breakfast person", "dinosaur bones", "chicken soup". In each case, the first noun is acting as a modifier. (Unlike an adjective, an attributive noun has no comparative or superlative forms: you can't say that this soup is "more chicken" than other soups, or that these bones are "the most dinosaur".)<<
The difference between an attributive noun and an adjective is shown by that you can form such comparative and superlative forms only if you do something to the attributive noun that actually turns it into an adjective, such as adding the suffix "-y" to it. One can say "more breakfasty person" even though one cannot say "more breakfast person".
(On that note, why is it that "-y" /i/ seems to have become extremely productive as a suffix for turning things into adjectives in spoken North American English, and yet it has not even barely poked its way into the written language in such a productive role, much less so than things like "hafta" and "gonna"?)
The difference between an attributive noun and an adjective is shown by that you can form such comparative and superlative forms only if you do something to the attributive noun that actually turns it into an adjective, such as adding the suffix "-y" to it. One can say "more breakfasty person" even though one cannot say "more breakfast person".
(On that note, why is it that "-y" /i/ seems to have become extremely productive as a suffix for turning things into adjectives in spoken North American English, and yet it has not even barely poked its way into the written language in such a productive role, much less so than things like "hafta" and "gonna"?)
(I shouldn't've said "become" there, because it assumes that it wasn't; it may have always been rather productive, like, say, German "-ig", but for some reason never really made its way into the literary language in such a productive role.)
<<(Unlike an adjective, an attributive noun has no comparative or superlative forms: you can't say that this soup is "more chicken" than other soups, or that these bones are "the most dinosaur".)>>
Likewise unlike with adjectives, you can't say:
*"These bones are dinosaur"
Likewise unlike with adjectives, you can't say:
*"These bones are dinosaur"
<It's an attributive noun>
I'd rather say it's a nominal attribute in terms of syntax.
I'd rather say it's a nominal attribute in terms of syntax.
<I'd rather say it's a nominal attribute in terms of syntax. >
What's the difference between that and an attributive noun?
What's the difference between that and an attributive noun?