Re: verbs = nouns?

At 9:39 pm -0500 9/1/01, DOUGLAS KOLLER wrote:
>From: "Nik Taylor"
[......]
>> Question: If behaving like a verb makes adjectives a kind of verb, then
>> why aren't adjectives considered a kind of noun in most IE langs?  In
>> most IE langs, adjectives act like nouns, taking the same endings as
>> nouns.
>
>Aren't they, though?

To which at 10:15 pm -0500 9/1/01, Nik Taylor replied:
"Not traditionally, at least."

Nay, but 'twas so.

I have a old "Catechism of Hebrew, Greek & Latin Grammar" which,
unfortunately, is not dated, but someone has written the date 1885 in it by
hand.

Greek is said to have eight parts of speech: noun, pronoun, participle,
adverb, preposition, conjunction, interjection.

The noun covers both what we now ('traditionally') call adjective as well
as what we now call noun; the grammar subdivides the category 'noun' into:
substantive (noun) and adjective (noun).

This was, as I understand it, the earlier usage and explains why
'substantive' and 'adjective' both carry an adjectival formative suffix
-ive.  Now, of course, many words ending in -ive are regularly used as
(substantive) nouns, but this was not the original use of such words.

After dealing with the declensions of substantives (i.e. 'nouns' in the
modern sense), the book goes on to say of adjectives:
"Q. How are adjectives and participles declined in Greek?
 A. The follow the declension of substantives....."
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At 10:51 pm -0500 9/1/01, H. S. Teoh wrote:
[....]
>
>OK, I might be way off here, but here's what I remember from Greek class:
>an adjective is actually distinct from a noun,
In what way?  The Catechism is correct when it says adjectives &
substantives decline the same way.

>but sometimes, you can use
>it substantively -- ie., as if it were a noun.
Not sometimes - always.

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The "Catechism" is even more explicit with regard to Latin:

Q. How many kinds of noun are there?
A. Two kinds, _substantive_ and _adjective_.
   1. A substantive denotes either a real substantial person or thing, e.g.
_vir_, a man; or a quality considered by itself, e.g. _utilitas_,
usefulness.
   2. An adjective expresses a quality as connected with a substantive, by
which the latter is more nearly defined, e.g. _vir doctus_, a learned man.
Q. What is a pronoun?
A. A pronoun supplies the place of a substantive, and is either a _pronoun
substantive_, e.g. _ego_, I; _tu_, thou; or a _pronoun adjective_, e.g.
_hic_, this; _qui_, who.
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Back to Nik's reply:
"But I've never heard adjectives called a type of *noun*."

Now you have - by a 19th cent British "Catechism of Hebrew, Greek & Latin
Grammar"   :)

"I prefer to think of adjectives as a class that in some languages are
inflected like verbs, in some like nouns, and in others  (like English)
like neither."

I agree.

Ray.



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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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