THE USE OF PREMODIFYING NOUNS AND ADJECTIVES: SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES
THE USE OF PREMODIFYING NOUNS AND ADJECTIVES: SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES

Summary/Abstract: Even though premodifying adjectives are so often singled out as more frequent than premodifying nouns and even though the messages of phrases containing these two types of premodifiers express the linguistic diversity differently, there are certain meanings which can be achieved only by the use of premodifying adjectives or the use of premodifying nouns. The aim of the paper is to prove this through analyses of examples taken from the newspaper register. In the end, after our analytic and descriptive analyses, we conclude that in many examples the same meaning cannot be achieved if premodifying nouns and adjectives change places. Higher frequency of premodifying adjectives was also proved through our research and the main reason supporting this conclusion was that typical phrase meanings with adjectives as premodifiers were much easier to recognize and undrestand than typical phrase meanings with nouns as premodifiers.

• Details
• Contents