Talk:belt and suspenders
Latest comment: 12 years ago by -sche in topic RFV
RFV edit
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The adjective looks like attributive use. See Wiktionary:English adjectives. DCDuring TALK 23:51, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
- What do you mean by attributive? The formation is nearly always 'the "belt and suspender" [something indicating option or choice]. - Amgine/talk 04:15, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
- You are right to ask. What you are seeing seems to be exactly attributive use of the noun. The notion is that, in English, at least, it is very common that a noun be used in attributive position to modify another noun. In principle every noun can be so used. Thus, if an expression that is commonly a noun modifies another noun in that way but does not otherwise behave like an adjective, we ought not call it an adjective. DCDuring TALK 04:53, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
- Then what makes an attributive noun an adjective? TeleComNasSprVen 04:58, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
- Being gradable or comparable is one clue: if "X is very belt and suspenders" or "X is more belt and suspenders than Y is", then "belt and suspender(s)" must be an adjective. DCDuring can explain more comprehensively, but I didn't want him to think he was the only one concerned about the difference. Oh, but in some cases (like aliquot), things are very murky. - -sche (discuss) 05:39, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
- Yes, and if a word can be used as a predicate after a form of "become", we consider it an adjective (forms of "be" being used in too many other ways to make an easy test). Or if a word has a semantically distinct sense when used attributively.
- To completely carry out the program of eliminating all "erroneous" adjective PoS sections we would need to convince those providing translations of English nouns to think to add any distinct word forms that translated attributive use of the noun. Thus, adjectives would appear among the translations of nouns.
- The purpose of this is to prevent having adjective PoS sections that duplicated the noun PoS sections (in definitions, usage examples, synonyms, attestation citations, etc). For, AFAICT, every noun sense of every noun (including every proper noun) has a corresponding adjective sense. DCDuring TALK 23:28, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
- Being gradable or comparable is one clue: if "X is very belt and suspenders" or "X is more belt and suspenders than Y is", then "belt and suspender(s)" must be an adjective. DCDuring can explain more comprehensively, but I didn't want him to think he was the only one concerned about the difference. Oh, but in some cases (like aliquot), things are very murky. - -sche (discuss) 05:39, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
- Then what makes an attributive noun an adjective? TeleComNasSprVen 04:58, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
- You are right to ask. What you are seeing seems to be exactly attributive use of the noun. The notion is that, in English, at least, it is very common that a noun be used in attributive position to modify another noun. In principle every noun can be so used. Thus, if an expression that is commonly a noun modifies another noun in that way but does not otherwise behave like an adjective, we ought not call it an adjective. DCDuring TALK 04:53, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
- RFV-failed. - -sche (discuss) 23:31, 14 July 2011 (UTC)