While reading an article I came across the following sentence:
The more successful group, in terms of their creativity quality of their solutions...
Is this grammatically correct? Can a noun be used to describe another noun?
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2A noun can be used to describe another noun - that's called a "noun adjunct" usage, as in a car door, the school playground. But you can't do this with just any pair of nouns, and the creativity quality would almost never be idiomatic (but in certain contexts you might just get away with it if "creativity" were in "scare quotes").– FumbleFingersCommented May 15, 2019 at 17:00
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1...as expected, there are a few written instances of the creativity gene in Google Books. But this is somewhat "creative" use of language, in which context I'd suggest non-native speakers should probably avoid it (there are more ways to get it wrong than to get it right).– FumbleFingersCommented May 15, 2019 at 17:05
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@FumbleFingers thanks for the remarks– Raaja_is_at_topanswers.xyzCommented May 16, 2019 at 5:06
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1 Answer
A noun can act as an adjective to another. If it does so, it's called an attributive noun (or a noun adjunct).
However, the specific sentence in the question is ungrammatical.
✘ The more successful group, in terms of their creativity quality of their solutions . . .
The following would both be grammatical versions of the same sentence:
✔ The more successful group, in terms of the creative quality of their solutions, was . . .
✔ The more successful group, in terms of their creative quality, was . . .
Which one to choose would depend on what was actually being expressed. (Since it's not a complete sentence, it's not entirely clear.)
Also note that, stylistically, some people might choose to use its as the pronoun for a group rather than their.
answered May 15, 2019 at 17:03
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My guess is that the writer really meant, "The more successful group, in terms of the creativity of their solutions..."– JuhaszCommented May 15, 2019 at 17:06