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In 'The team whose favorite color is red won the match' is 'RED' used as a noun or an adjective?

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It's a noun.

When the name of a colour is an adjective it must be describing another noun (eg their shirts are red).

I'm guessing that your doubt may come from the fact the noun 'colour' has been mentioned, and perhaps you think 'red' could be describing that? But 'colour' is an abstract noun. It is a concept, not an object. The concept of colour cannot itself have a colour! 'Red' is a type of colour, so saying "my favourite colour is red" is comparable with saying "my favourite fruit is an apple", where both 'fruit' and 'apple' are definitely nouns.

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It is a noun, the evidence for this is that the word red could be modified by an adjective, and even take an article "My favourite colour is a strong red" (for example)

But this is a classic case of "does grammar matter?". The purpose of learning grammar as an English learner is to help you understand and communicate. I say that it doesn't matter what part of speech you assign to "red", since the meaning would be exactly the same.

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  • "it doesn't matter what part of speech you assign to "red", since the meaning would be exactly the same". I don't understand this at all. Misunderstanding on the part of a listener never changes the intended meaning of the speaker. I thought this was a valid question, not one to dismiss as unimportant. If a vegan pointed at some chicken and asked "what is this you just served me?", would you say "it doesn't matter what it is, because it doesn't change what it is"? The OP wanted to know what the word was. It matters to them.
    – Astralbee
    Commented Oct 21, 2023 at 15:46
  • Yes, please look at the first paragraph. The vegan example is irrelevant.
    – James K
    Commented Oct 21, 2023 at 16:31
  • My point is (I guess) that grammar is a model of how language is parsed and interpreted, and you can have different models. We don't know if our description of grammar has any connection with how the brain actually works. So assigning parts of speech is useful if it helps you to understand. and not useful if it doesn't
    – James K
    Commented Oct 21, 2023 at 16:32

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