Re: Question about a grammatical term

En réponse à Matthew Kehrt <mkehrt@...>:

> I believe these are called substantive nouns.
Redundant name. For practical purposes (and specifically for
English), "substantive" and "noun" are nearly synonymous (not exactly:
substantives include pronouns in English. But they don't include adjectives
like they do in French). Strange terminology...

  Since English quite
> easily
> allows one to use one part of speech as another ("Verbing weirds
> language"
> -Calvin and Hobbes), I think that this is just an example of using a
> noun
> as an adjective (in fact, I think "substantive" is an old term for
> "adjective".).
No. "Substantive" is a modern and more precise term replacing "noun" in grammar
descriptions. I know that I learned all my French grammar using the
word "substantif" :)) .

>
> P.S.  Maybe not.  Dictionary.com (American Heritage Dictionary
> definition, I think) defines substantive as
>
>  n. Grammar
> A word or group of words functioning as a noun.
>
That's the definition of the expression "noun phrase"!!! The
term "substantive", at least in the modern sense I've seen it used, basically
means "a word (and always a single one) which can act as head of a noun
phrase". So substantives include nouns, pronouns, and adjectives in languages
like French which can use adjectives as nouns without modification (we can
say "le rouge" when in English you have to say "the red ONE").

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

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