Adjectivisation of nouns

In modern English a noun may stand before another noun and modify it. Examples: stone wall, peace talks, steel works, the Rome treaty.

1. H.Sweet have defended the first element of such phrases as stone wall is a noun.

2. O. Jespersen stated that it is an adjective or at least approaches the adjective state.

3. the view has also been expressed that this element is neither a noun nor an adjective but a separate part of speech (attributive noun).

# 27 Substantivization of adjectives and adjectivization of nouns.

In all the Indo-European languages adjectives can be substantivized, i. e. converted into nouns. In English it is easier than in other languages owing to the scarcity of stem-building elements. Cf. (a) chick (n.)—sick (a.), tedder (a.) — gender (п.).

When adjectives are converted into nouns they no longer indicate attributes of substances, but substances possessing these attributes. / felt it my duty to help the sick.

Adjectives wholly converted into nouns acquire not only the lexico-grammatical meaning of nouns, but their typical morphological categories and combinability, as in a young native ' s hut where the word native not only expresses 'substantivity' but has the grammatical" meanings of number and case, left-hand connections with an article and an adjective 3.

In " He is one of those bitter sceptical young moderns, with no real knowledge of the world" (Galsworthy) moderns is a 'plural', 'common case' noun, modified by a demonstrative pronoun, some adjectives, etc.

More frequently substantivization is but partial. Adjectives may acquire the lexico-grajimatical meaning of the noun and to some extent its combinability, as in the following sentences:

She has as much faith in what the British Government's going to do for t h e deserving poor as the rest of us. (Gilbert). All the self-righteous are going to say he is infernally careless. (Gilbert). It means the ugly have a look in. (Galsworthy). Here the poor, the self-righteous, the ugly express 'substantivity' and are associated with the definite article, but unlike the noun native, the word poor has no case and number opposites. It may be modified by an adverb, as in the fabulously rich. Such partially substantivized adjectives as the rich, the young, etc. mostly have collective force, while in earlier English substantivized adjectives were freely used to denote individuals. In contemporary English this is rare, though-possible.

E. g. Many times he looked over the people's heads to where his son's wife sat alone, and he saw the fair face the unforgiven dead had loved. (Burnett).

Theoretically speaking, any adjective may be converted into a noun, though the conversion is often temporary, unstable, conversion " for the nonce", asinT h e mysterious attracted him 1.