Timeline for Is *dozen* an adjective?
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| Nov 28, 2015 at 7:31 | comment | added | sumelic | @GregHullender: I know you're intentionally simplifying things in your answer, but I think you take several rather large leaps in "I assume that you have no problem seeing that "ten" is an adjective. Therefore you must agree that "hundred" is also an adjective." Why must "ten" be an adjective, and why does that mean that "hundred" is also an adjective? (Is the indefinite article "a/an," which also indicates number, an adjective?) | |
| Nov 28, 2015 at 7:26 | comment | added | sumelic | @Jay: it's impossible to define parts of speech entirely by semantic criteria, though, so you need to rely on formal criteria of some sort. Adjectives are not the only type of word that can describe a noun. In the phrase "the dog in the house that is wagging its tail," the words "the," "in," and "wagging" describe the word "dog"; but one is an article, one is a preposition, and one is a participle. | |
| Aug 27, 2015 at 3:20 | comment | added | user22619 | Why is 'two dozens of bananas' considered wrong? | |
| Sep 26, 2013 at 20:00 | comment | added | Jay | ... brown hair and Bob has blond hair, and all the Australians I know say 'G'day mate' and Bob doesn't", I'd think that was all pretty much irrelevant. An adjective is generally defined as a word that describes, modifies, or qualifies a noun. I would think that in "dozen eggs", "dozen" describes or qualifies "eggs" by specifying how many. In the same way that words like "some", "many", and "more" might describe "eggs". Are you saying that those aren't adjectives either? | |
| Sep 26, 2013 at 19:57 | comment | added | Jay | @snailboat I am not a linguist. That said, "It's true that some adjectives fail predicate tests or gradability tests, but they don't usually fail every test we can throw at them--how would we know they were adjectives!?" I find this statement puzzling. would think that we determine if an item fits in a category by examining the definition of that category, not peripheral characteristics. If someone asked me, "Is Bob a native Australian?", the only relevant fact would be whether or not Bob was born in Australia. If someone said, "No, he's not, because all the Australians I know have ... | |
| Sep 26, 2013 at 3:40 | comment | added | Roaring Fish | As for "the blues and reds", this is clearly a noun because it has a determiner in front of it. From WordNet "Noun S: (n) blue, blueness (blue color or pigment; resembling the color of the clear sky in the daytime) "he had eyes of bright blue" You really need to brush up on your word classes: they describe the function of the word, not the word as you believe, and 'blue' can obviously function as a noun. BTW, drawing a parallel between 'ten' and 'blue' is pointless. 'Blue' is an attribute. 'Ten' isn't. They are completely different animals. | |
| Sep 26, 2013 at 1:26 | comment | added | Roaring Fish | If I am wrong, then explain how your adjective can be the subject of a sentence, the object of a sentence, be countable, and modify a referent but cannot be graded or used with other adjectives. | |
| Sep 25, 2013 at 18:29 | comment | added | Greg Hullender | I don't mean to be patronizing. I'm just telling you you're wrong. You're wrong about plurals too, by the way. You probably agree that "blue" is an adjective, yet I hope you'd accept a sentence like "The picture is remarkable for the variety of blues and reds." You simply seem to be making rules up as you go along without even trying to see if they really work. I think that's a bad thing to do on a site used by people who are trying to improve their use of the language and have to trust native speakers to tell them the truth. | |
| Sep 25, 2013 at 18:24 | comment | added | Roaring Fish | Please don't patronise me by telling me what linguists do. I know very well what they think and do. Yes, numbers are determiners, which are not adjectives so your answer is still wrong. As determiners modify the reference of the noun, in many languages are an affix of a noun, and always display most of the characteristics of a noun, they are more noun-like than adjective-like and keeping it simple should mean calling it a noun. If you want to go 'deeply' into it, ten is a numeral (not a numeric...) which is a sub class of quantifier, which in turn is a subclass of determiner. | |
| Sep 24, 2013 at 16:51 | comment | added | Greg Hullender | If you want to go into it deeply, "ten" is a determiner. Linguists separate determiners from adjectives for a variety of reasons, some of which you're stumbling onto. But this forum is for English Language learners and I thought a deep discussion of determiners vs. adjectives would be unhelpful. If you really want a specific term for determiners like "ten" and "dozen," I have seen them called "numerics" in the literature. | |
| Sep 24, 2013 at 7:46 | comment | added | aarbee | @RoaringFish- okay. I wish you could categorise it. I mean is it abstract noun? I don't think so. Is it common noun? No way. Is it collective noun? Na. I wish you could help me here. | |
| Sep 24, 2013 at 7:36 | comment | added | Roaring Fish | @Ramit: In contrast, it cannot be graded: that is very ten X. It cannot be extreme: that is really ten! X It cannot be included in an adjective sequence: the big, ten, red car X An adjective should be able to do those things. | |
| Sep 24, 2013 at 7:31 | comment | added | Roaring Fish | @Ramit: Ten can be a subject: ten would be nice; or a subject: There are the ten I brought; it can be plural *There are tens of them, or even hundreds". These are all defining characteristics of a noun. | |
| Sep 24, 2013 at 6:24 | comment | added | aarbee | @snailboat- If you say dozen is a noun, can you please add which type of noun it is? I'll appreciate if you write a separate answer for it. | |
| Sep 24, 2013 at 6:13 | comment | added | aarbee | @RoaringFish- If we go by this link, ten is a Definite Numeral Adjective. | |
| Sep 24, 2013 at 5:01 | comment | added | Roaring Fish | @GregHullender ~ "Snailboat's tests (if I've understood him correctly) also show that "ten" isn't an adjective" - WordNet: NounS: (n) ten, 10, X, tenner, decade (the cardinal number that is the sum of nine and one; the base of the decimal system) ~ American Heritage: noun The cardinal number equal to 9 + 1. ~ Memidex: noun the cardinal number that is the sum of 9 and 1; the base of the decimal system | |
| Sep 24, 2013 at 4:48 | comment | added | aarbee | @GregHullender- Oxford dictionary mentions leather as noun only. In example, it writes- a leather jacket! Are we sure we are not missing anything? Because I would like to believe that leather itself is adjective here and not just the phrase a leather. | |
| Sep 24, 2013 at 4:02 | vote | accept | aarbee | ||
| Sep 24, 2013 at 6:15 | |||||
| Sep 24, 2013 at 4:02 | comment | added | aarbee | @GregHullender- Your edited version is very interesting and enlightening. Adjective phrases- I never knew about that. Thanks! | |
| Sep 23, 2013 at 22:11 | comment | added | Greg Hullender | I've edited my response to incorporate some of this. The last few points you guys are making relate to the distinction between determiners and adjectives that I was trying to avoid, given that the answer is meant for non-native speakers wanting to know if "dozen" is a noun or an adjective. Snailboat's tests (if I've understood him correctly) also show that "ten" isn't an adjective either. That isn't going to help the OP. | |
| Sep 23, 2013 at 22:10 | comment | added | Jay | It's true that no one says "The bananas are a dozen." But if someone asked, "How many bananas are there?" you might answer, "There are a dozen." That's using it as a predicate adjective. There are other adjectives that don't work in the predicate. Like, "We held a morning meeting", but "The meeting is morning"? No. "Raw materials": yes. "The materials are raw"? No. I can't think of many examples but there are a few. | |
| Sep 23, 2013 at 22:04 | history | edited | Greg Hullender | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Sep 23, 2013 at 21:58 | comment | added | Jay | You can say "I ate the biggest banana" and also "I ate the biggest", or "We had a yellow banana and a red banana, and I ate the red." Some adjectives work as stand-alones with an implied noun and others don't. | |
| Sep 23, 2013 at 21:57 | comment | added | Jay | @snailboat We don't say "the red dozen bananas" but we do say "the dozen red bananas". I think that's just a convention, that numbers tend to go first in a list of adjectives. It doesn't make sense to say "the twelvest" because something can't be more or less twelve: it is or it isn't. We don't say "the uniquest" or "the lastest" or "the Europeanist" either, but "unique", "last", and "European" are adjectives. Some adjectives just don't have a degree. | |
| Sep 23, 2013 at 20:49 | comment | added | Greg Hullender | Okay, I'm sure that's it. All of the rules you think you know for adjectives are really rules for adjective phrases. But since nearly all bare English adjectives are valid phrases, the distinction rarely comes up. Bare words like "dozen," "hundred," and "thousand," however, cannot be phrases. Now for some examples to speak to snailboat's concerns: "The bananas are a dozen. Give two to each kid." "Get twenty or a dozen bananas, whichever is cheaper." "I'm glad I bought an extra dozen bananas." The head noun example didn't make sense to me. | |
| Sep 23, 2013 at 20:23 | comment | added | Greg Hullender | This is a fun problem. :-) I think the issue here may be that "dozen" is an adjective but it is not an adjective phrase. Nearly all adjectives in English can be phrases all by themselves, but dozen cannot. "A dozen" or "a round dozen" or a phrase like that is required. I agree that there's more to it, though. | |
| Sep 23, 2013 at 19:51 | comment | added | aarbee | @GregHullender- I am not saying that it's a noun. I would like to believe that dozen is an adjective in my sentence. I just want any dictionary to confirm that. And now with sanilboat's comment, I am doubting the adjective-ity or adjective-ness of dozen even more. | |
| Sep 23, 2013 at 19:47 | comment | added | aarbee | @snailboat- that's very interesting! However, I can make a sentence from one of your phrases. The very twelve bananas that you gave me yesterday have turned into apples today! | |
| Sep 23, 2013 at 19:21 | comment | added | Greg Hullender | Here's a challenge for you, then. If you think dozen is a noun, how would you diagram (or parse) that sentence? | |
| Sep 23, 2013 at 19:08 | comment | added | aarbee | @TylerJamesYoung- If Oxford would exclude special definitions, then who would include that? OALD is so rich otherwise. It doesn't miss even a single definition of many words. I wonder why it skipped cardinals and ordinals. | |
| Sep 23, 2013 at 18:56 | comment | added | aarbee | @Greg- The link you quoted mentions that dozen is also an adjective and just below that there is another link which when I open says that dozen is a noun, example- a dozen eggs! It's really confusing. | |
| Sep 23, 2013 at 18:50 | comment | added | Tyler James Young | Almost any noun can function as an adjective. Cardinals (and ordinals) are sort of special and could probably use a mention there, but I think the OALD is thinking it'll be less confusing if they omit special definitions like this. (Consider the above “above”, which is acting as an adjective, even though it is a preposition.) | |
| Sep 23, 2013 at 18:45 | history | answered | Greg Hullender | CC BY-SA 3.0 |