Re: OT: Fun, was Re: First thoughts on Imperial

At 22:54 19/07/03, Doug Dee <AmateurLinguist@...> wrote:

>I'm not sure that it's accurate to say that "fun" was a noun and not an
>adjective for people within, say, the last century.  I think even people
>who reject
>"funner" and "that was a fun party" accept "That party was fun", where "fun"
>looks to me like a predicate adjective.  Anything you might naturally
>substitute for "fun" in that sentence is an adjective : "That party was
>great/wonderful/exciting."  OK, conceivably you could say "That party was
>excitement", with
>a noun, but that's more than a bit peculiar.
>
>Therefore, I think it's more accurate to say that "fun" was formerly a
>defective adjective that couldn't be used attributively and had no
>comparative,
>rather than to say that it was  a noun and not an adjective.

No no, in "That party was fun" (old style) "fun" was still a noun.  It's
parallel to "That party was a disaster," except it's a noncount noun and so
doesn't take the articles.  And they could say, "That was a fun party,"
too, because you can modify nouns with nouns in English.  But funner was
right out, as would be, say, "a fun and stupid party," because it wasn't an
adjective.

But of course, it behaved enough like an adjective that younger generations
mistook it for one and began to use it as one, and so it became
one.  ("Defective adjective" may have been an intermediate stage, of
course; in fact, it's probably a fair description of my usage.)

Ian

Reply