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What part of speech is “the”? (2006)

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Re: What part of speech is “the”? (2006)

#41

Post by Cushman »

peterfirefly wrote: post #35
pests wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, what exactly is wrong about the last one? It sounds odd, but not so incorrect, to me.

It is perfectly grammatical if "brick" is taken to be a verb. Edit: this is in reference to "brick the barn". Grammatical if nonsensical. "Brick ancient barn" is of course weird and wrong unless you really want to emphasize that this is a brick ancient barn and not a wooden ancient barn like all the other ancient barns. The normal adjective order can be deviated from for emphasis. My point was that that didn't work w…

Not to keep you up, but what's even cooler is that the degree to which you can deviate depends on the adjective's class, too. While I can sorta see "brick ancient barn" working, albeit with such heavy emphasis on "brick" that "ancient barn" turns into a bit of a compound, "grain lone silo" or "fish dry pond" don't sound grammatical to me at all. Maybe also because "grain silo" and "fish pond" are almost-notquite compounds?

Re: What part of speech is “the”? (2006)

#42

Post by dsfas »

Cushman wrote: post #27
peterfirefly wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's not really "wrong" to say "the" is an adjective: it functions exactly like one! The, theer, theest? The, more the, most the? The shoe was red but most importantly, it was the. She had never before seen so the a shoe! In the clearing was old a house with smoke rising from stone the chimney. Edit: couldn't decide on the number of shoes so I went for both singular and plural :(

Not to sincerely defend the claim that "the" "is" an adjective, but rather to dispute the general notion that grammar is "real": Here are some adjectives that fail your tests. > The, theer, theest? The, more the, most the? * Worstest? Most least? > The shoe was red but most importantly, it was the. She had never before seen so the a shoe! * The smallest shoe confused her. How could it be so smallest?! > In the cleari…

"Worstest" seems to be a morphological problem. "Most least" could be permissible, if somewhat exotic sounding, I think, if "least" is read with its adjectival meaning―"used in names of very small animals and plants, e.g., least shrew"―so eg. most least shrew. "So smallest" doesn't work with any other superlative ("most reddest") that I can imagine off the top of my head. And "brick ancient barn" is an unusual order but not ungrammatical, though it is interesting. (It sounds more like listing adjectives, ie. I'd read a larger pause after "brick" and stress on "ancient", than the other order. MATERIAL AGE NOUN seems to read awkwardly.)

Re: What part of speech is “the”? (2006)

#43

Post by peterfirefly »

plorkyeran wrote: post #40
Cushman wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to sincerely defend the claim that "the" "is" an adjective, but rather to dispute the general notion that grammar is "real": Here are some adjectives that fail your tests. > The, theer, theest? The, more the, most the? * Worstest? Most least? > The shoe was red but most importantly, it was the. She had never before seen so the a shoe! * The smallest shoe confused her. How could it be so smallest?! > In the cleari…

"brick grey ancient barn" is grammatically correct if you assume "brick grey" is a color, but of course that's probably not what it's supposed to mean.

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

Re: What part of speech is “the”? (2006)

#44

Post by Cushman »

dsfas wrote: post #42
Cushman wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to sincerely defend the claim that "the" "is" an adjective, but rather to dispute the general notion that grammar is "real": Here are some adjectives that fail your tests. > The, theer, theest? The, more the, most the? * Worstest? Most least? > The shoe was red but most importantly, it was the. She had never before seen so the a shoe! * The smallest shoe confused her. How could it be so smallest?! > In the cleari…

"Worstest" seems to be a morphological problem. "Most least" could be permissible, if somewhat exotic sounding, I think, if "least" is read with its adjectival meaning―"used in names of very small animals and plants, e.g., least shrew"―so eg. most least shrew. "So smallest" doesn't work with any other superlative ("most reddest") that I can imagine off the top of my head. And "brick ancient barn" is an unusual order…

If "brick ancient barn" is too plausible for you to get the full effect, try something with more diverse adjectives like "beef tasty stew" or "laptop lost bag".

Re: What part of speech is “the”? (2006)

#45

Post by Animats »

This was resolved years ago in the linguistics community. There are open-class words, which in English are nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. New open-class words can easily be added to the language. There are closed-class words, about a hundred of them, although opinions differ on this.[1] Some lists have "the" as a closed-class word, others have it as an an adverb.

Closed-class words are treated like keywords in programming languages. The list seldom changes, and it's necessary to know the closed-class words, but not the open-class words, to parse a sentence. (At least in formal English.) While there are taxonomies of the closed-class words, modern thinking is that they're all handled as special cases.

[1] https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/English_vocabulary_list

Re: What part of speech is “the”? (2006)

#46

Post by philsnow »

Cushman wrote: post #27
peterfirefly wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's not really "wrong" to say "the" is an adjective: it functions exactly like one! The, theer, theest? The, more the, most the? The shoe was red but most importantly, it was the. She had never before seen so the a shoe! In the clearing was old a house with smoke rising from stone the chimney. Edit: couldn't decide on the number of shoes so I went for both singular and plural :(

Not to sincerely defend the claim that "the" "is" an adjective, but rather to dispute the general notion that grammar is "real": Here are some adjectives that fail your tests. > The, theer, theest? The, more the, most the? * Worstest? Most least? > The shoe was red but most importantly, it was the. She had never before seen so the a shoe! * The smallest shoe confused her. How could it be so smallest?! > In the cleari…

> Outside the wooden red house was a brick grey ancient barn.

native speakers of english will find that "red wooden house" is favored over "wooden red house", the same way the "big red dog" is favored over "red big dog".

There's an ordering to adjectives that has something to do with how important the adjective is to the identity or distinctiveness of the modified object.

Re: What part of speech is “the”? (2006)

#47

Post by Cushman »

plorkyeran wrote: post #40
Cushman wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to sincerely defend the claim that "the" "is" an adjective, but rather to dispute the general notion that grammar is "real": Here are some adjectives that fail your tests. > The, theer, theest? The, more the, most the? * Worstest? Most least? > The shoe was red but most importantly, it was the. She had never before seen so the a shoe! * The smallest shoe confused her. How could it be so smallest?! > In the cleari…

"brick grey ancient barn" is grammatically correct if you assume "brick grey" is a color, but of course that's probably not what it's supposed to mean.

Indeed! Although I'd argue that probably is what it's supposed to mean.

A "leather horse saddle" and a "horse leather saddle" are very different things, and no native English speaker would mix them up. You know which they mean.

Re: What part of speech is “the”? (2006)

#48

Post by philsnow »

SilasX wrote: post #19
tedd4u wrote: post #12

I'm surprised the author has run in to so many that don't seem to have learned about articles. Isn't this one of the most basic topics in middle-school grammar? I'm pretty sure "the" is one of the most common words in the language after all. I was taught in 6th or 7th grade that "the" is the definite article. As opposed to "a" which is an indefinite article. For those that are fuzzy on the concept this is the best on…

As the article points out, it's not really "wrong" to say "the" is an adjective: it functions exactly like one! It's only wrong in the sense of violating one of two equally useful classification systems. And this error doesn't even bubble up to the level of miscommunication, the only real sense in which you can say someone's usage is incorrect! Remember, in everyday use, you don't directly observe word classification…

They're determiners (part of determiner phrases, like "the", "some", "a", "all", "many", "most", "85% of", "at least seven", etc). They don't function exactly like adjectives. Noun phrases need determiners on them or they feel ungrammatical.

"Dog kicked ball" is ungrammatical whereas "the dog kicked a ball" is fine.

"Red dog kicked blue ball" is plausible only when "red dog" and "blue ball" are considered proper nouns (meaning the phrase "red dog" denotes a particular dog in the context).

Proper nouns like George Washington don't need a determiner.

Re: What part of speech is “the”? (2006)

#49

Post by peterfirefly »

Cushman wrote: post #41
peterfirefly wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is perfectly grammatical if "brick" is taken to be a verb. Edit: this is in reference to "brick the barn". Grammatical if nonsensical. "Brick ancient barn" is of course weird and wrong unless you really want to emphasize that this is a brick ancient barn and not a wooden ancient barn like all the other ancient barns. The normal adjective order can be deviated from for emphasis. My point was that that didn't work w…

Not to keep you up, but what's even cooler is that the degree to which you can deviate depends on the adjective's class, too. While I can sorta see " brick ancient barn" working, albeit with such heavy emphasis on "brick" that "ancient barn" turns into a bit of a compound, "grain lone silo" or "fish dry pond" don't sound grammatical to me at all . Maybe also because "grain silo" and "fish pond" are almost-notquite co…

That ship has sailed. It's 06:40 and the sun has been pouring through my windows for more than an hour :/ The part of my body that has synched up with the daylight refuses to listen to the part that needs sleep.

--

"Grain silo" and "fish pond" are exactly-precisely compound nouns. It's just that English refuses to accept that it's a Germanic language and instead puts on airs. Honest languages would of course never dream of inserting pretentious spaces between the constituent parts.

I actually thought of "stone chimney" as a compound noun instead of adjective + noun when I wrote it, precisely because I wanted to mock that and really hammer home the point. Unfortunately, the two look the same in English (but not in Danish) -- and I was tired -- so I didn't catch it and replace it with a better example.

Re: What part of speech is “the”? (2006)

#50

Post by falsedan »

Cushman wrote: post #47
plorkyeran wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"brick grey ancient barn" is grammatically correct if you assume "brick grey" is a color, but of course that's probably not what it's supposed to mean.

Indeed! Although I'd argue that probably is what it's supposed to mean. A "leather horse saddle" and a "horse leather saddle" are very different things, and no native English speaker would mix them up. You know which they mean.

What's your point?
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