The Syntactic Process of Substantivization of Adjectives

When dealing with adjectives we can’t help commenting on the process of Adjective Substantivization. This process is based on more or less regular ellipsis of the noun in the attributive noun-phrases “an adjective + a noun” like “a private soldier” and “a private”; “an official post” and “an official”; “a daily paper” and “a daily”.

Logically there arises the question of the morphological status of these words, whether they are nouns or adjectives. To answer this question we should compare the characteristic features of the noun and of the Substantivized adjective. We are to mind:

1. the category of number (the ability to form Plural);

2. the usage with an article;

3. the ability to be modified by an attribute;

4. the ability to function as subject or object in the sentence;

The analysis of the language units under consideration shows that there are cases when these units satisfy all these noun features, but there are also case when these units possess not all but only some of the named characteristics.

e.g. The young, the poor, the wounded. These units are singular in their form but plural in their meaning, they do not differentiate the category of number, they can be used only with the definite article which only formally marks their nominative nature.

Traditionally cases of the first type are treated as cases of complete substantivization, while the cases of the second type are treated as cases of partial substantivization.

Yet, it seems right to say that in the first case we should sooner speak not of substantivized adjectives but of nouns, because words like “a private” have lost all their adjective features and have acquired all the characteristic features of nouns and hence they do not differ from them.

Similarly we don’t speak of adverbial verbs or nominal verbs when they are derived from adverbs or nouns by conversion.

As for the forms “the rich, “the brave”, they can be treated and called as substantivized adjectives, because they have preserved some of their adjective features alongside with the new nominal features.

e.g. The opinion of the old, of the older, of the oldest happened to be the same.

“The old”, “the older”, “the oldest” are substantivized adjectives.

The substantivized adjectives take the intermediate position between the noun and the adjective. They belong to the periphery of the morphological field of both: the adjective and the noun. They can be located in the area where the morphological fields of these parts of speech overlap the borders of each other.

The “Stone Wall” Problem

When dealing with adjectives and first of all with their syntactic functioning we come across another problem which is widely known in linguistics as the “stone wall” problem. This problem is connected with the morphological status of the first component in phrases like N1+N2+N3+… which are typical of modern English.

The first component stands in preposition to another noun and modifies it performing the function of an attribute, such features are characteristic of adjectives. So there arises a question whether the first component is a noun or whether it is an adjective formed by conversion from a noun. The first component in such phrases evidently undergoes the process of adjectivization on the plane of content while it remains unchanged on the plane of expression.

So far no unanimous conclusion has been arrives at concerning the morphological status of the first component. Some authors treat it as a noun (Henry Sweet), others take it for an adjective (Otto Jespersen), some authors treat it as a special part of speech, i.e. an attributive noun (Шубин).

Taking into consideration these three principal points of view it doesn’t seem advantageous to agree to the 3d opinion because practically the same word with the same meaning should be simultaneously included into 2 different parts of speech: noun and adjective. To make it clear for us whether we deal with a noun or an adjective when operating the component “stone” we should take into consideration the basic features of these parts of speech and apply them to the word under analysis.

So the noun is characterized by the morphological category of number. It means that countable nouns distinguish singularity and plurality. As for the first component in phrases like “stone wall” it can be used mostly in the singular and it doesn’t change its number what is possible for the noun “stone”. We can say one stone – many stones, but we can’t say stones wall. Thus the first component doesn’t differentiate the category of number. This feature differs words under analysis from nouns proper. However the morphological category of number is not characteristic of English adjectives either. Besides nouns naming materials are uncountable and don’t differentiate the category of number and in the phrase “a stone wall” the first component sooner names material but not a concrete object. So the fact that the first component doesn’t differentiate the category of number is not sufficient to reject its noun nature and refer it to the adjectives.

Now let’s take the meaning. We can say that the first component sooner names some substance like nouns and not property like adjectives because for some of such components there exist derived adjectives: e. g. stone – stony, wood – wooden.

However as a rule the derived adjectives name some property which is only based on its relation to the corresponding noun, but the shade of meaning of the derived adjective is mostly different from the meaning of the noun in such cases.

Cf.: a stone wall / a stony road (каменистая дорога), a stony face;

a glass door / a glassy look

The matter is that English adjectives lost their inflexions in Middle and Early Modern English and coincided with corresponding nouns on the plane of expression.

Cf.: a stone wall – каменная стена

A wall made of stone - стена из камня

It may seem logical to think that we deal with 2 homonyms: an adjective and a noun which reveal their difference only in functioning. It “stone” is used attributively then it’s an adjective, it it’s used as subject or in some other functions typical of nouns then it’s a noun. Yet we can doubt this opinion because adjectives can freely function as attributes and predicatives while the words under analysis can hardly be used predicatively:

Cf.: This is a beautiful dress. This dress is beautiful.

This is a silk dress. This dress is silk.

This is our schoolyard ≠ This yard is our school.

Hence we can conclude that the “stone” component is hardly an adjective. Besides in a number of cases it can be modified by an adjective or a possessive pronoun or by the possessive proper like a noun, but it can’t be modified by an adverb like an adjective.

e. g. a silk tie – a red silk tie; press information – today’s local press information

So we can conclude that the “stone” component denotes not a property but a substance which serves as a means to name a property of some object. This property is revealed through reference to the substance named by the first component of such phrases. Due to its functioning the first noun in similar phrases appears to be partly adjectivized.

Thus phrases like “a stone wall” consist of 2 nouns and can be called binoms (биномы). In Modern English especially in official and newspaper styles word combinations of several nouns are quite common.

e. g. a Moscow metro station, coal industry unemployment rates, space exploration achievements

Such word combinations include more than 2 nouns in which each preceding one is in the attributive function to the following one or to the rest of the group. Taking into consideration the number of components in such phrases they can be called polynoms.