isn't it defining the court? telling us that it is a certain type of court? a "blue" court? a "hung" jury? a "toy" court?
Yes, toy is modifying (or qualifying if you will) court, but I don't see as that makes it an adjective.
1a. the blue court
1b. the very blue court
1c. the court is blue
1d. the court which is blue
1e. the bluer/bluest court
2a. the toy court
2b. *the very toy court (at least not in the sense of the court that was very toy)
2c. *the court is toy
2d. *the court which is toy
2e. *the toyer/toyest court
No matter what you want to call them, they (blue and toy) seem to be two different kinds of words. I tend to categorize words by what slots they can fill in a sentence's structure. So, because toy is modifying court doesn't mean, to me, that it is an adjective, but that it is a noun modifying another noun. We have plenty of compounds made up of two or more nouns. Would you say that in the phrase ancient history teacher that ancient history is an adjective? (Leaving aside the old joke of whether it's a history teacher who is ancient or a teacher of ancient history, but not a history teacher of ancient or a teacher who is ancient history.) Calling toy in this case an adjective complicates things syntactically because then you have to have two (or more) classes of adjective: some that act like normal adjectives (see examples 1 above) and others which act differently (i.e., like nouns but aren't, see 2 above).
[Edited by addition for more clarity.]
Last edited by zmjezhd; 01/12/08 03:20 AM.
