h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Jack, please provide some examples to illustrate your last sentence, since I don't understand what you mean by "cannot undergo comparison" and "invariable".

Thanks Gnomon ¬¬¬ curse that cheese !

Fair do's. You can't say 'two-manner' (comparative) or 'two-mannest' (superlative) bobsleigh like you can faster or fastest bobsleigh. So unlike with adjectives, this construction cannot undergo comparison. Since the noun in it (man, pound etc) does not change for the plural, the construction can be called invariable, i.e. it always has the same form.

Resistance to inflected (adding -s for plural, -er for comparative etc.) comparison is also true for adjectives made from participles. Hence 'A boreder/tireder/exciteder man than me' sounds wrong. For these you have to use 'more' and 'most'.

Hello there all,

just been back on h2g2 after a few weeks away and delighted to see you are all nattering away about Brit English with as much relish and imagination as ever (although sometimes the imagination seems to creep into the replies as well as the questions <cheeky_smirk_smiley&gt.

Just thought I would second Madent on this compound-adjective thing - Anyone remember the old bigs browns ten-pounds notes?

seeya
spiff

Sorry, must disagree with logic of Madent and Spiff - the compound adjective could just as easily be ten-pounds. So, does no one have a convincing explanation?

Perhaps you could give us an example of an adjective with a plural usage, other than by referring to one of the compound adjectives given above?

I don't believe the construction is an adjective - it is a compound noun. Can anybody find an example of a noun (compound or not) which can be pluralised in this position (when it is being used to describe the main noun)? If not, then we'll take that as a rule, and, as an added bonus, Two-Bit won't have to change his name.

Jack is right, two-bit is a compound noun acting as an adjective. Nouns acting as adjectives are a very common feature of English and can often be confusing for foreigners: Fallout Shelter Report is obviously a Report about a Shelter to protect you from Fallout. This is three nouns, but two of them are being used as adjective.

Indian Summer Weather is another example. Here Indian is an adjective. Indian Summer is a compound noun - it is not a type of summer, but a seperate time of year in its own right. Indian Summer Weather has a compound noun (Indian Summer) acting as an adjective.

None of this offers any definite explanation to Kaeori: why Ten Ton Tessie and not Ten Tons Tessie? At the end of the day, K, that's just the way it is.

But it isn't a noun of any description, is it? Adjectives qualify nouns and in the phrase 'A ten-pound bag of potatoes', 'ten-pound' is definitely qualifying the noun 'bag'. In my book (figuratively speaking, rather my grammar book) that makes it an adjective.

A compound-adjective, ok - because it is made up of more than one word (whether they be nouns, adjectives or even, as in this case, figures) - but adjective none-the-less.

Where am I getting it wrong?

spiff

Hmm

The number is used as an adjective, so which takes precedence?

My grammar reference provides "two-man" as an example of a compound adjective and "gas cylinder" as an example of a compound noun. It also provides some hypenated compound nouns but indicates that these would normally only occur in long strings of nouns (4 or 5 nouns long) and are used only to provide appropriate emphasis.

There is the similar, though possbly less grammatically rigorous construction applying to people/nicknames where plurals *are* allowed, such as Gazza's mate 'Jimmy "Five Bellies" Gardner', or the Conservative polititian David "Two Brains" Willetts.

These are not relevant examples.

"Two Brains" is a simple adjective + noun construction used as a nickname and is not a compound noun or adjective at all.

Well, I suggest that 'two-man' and 'ten-pound' are both individual adjectives that happen to be made up of two *other* words stuck together with a hyphen. Therefore there is no reason why those adjectives would suddenly take a plural, no matter what kind of noun they are qualifying.

I agree that in 'gas cylinder', 'gas' is an adjective qualifying the a noun (and that the adj has been formed by taking the noun which represents the contents of the cylinder)

Perhaps there is a technical term for this phenomenon, .

spiff

Looks good to me, Spiff.

I think that whether they are compound nouns or compound adjectives is probably irrelevant. "Ten-pound" and "two-man" are used as adjectives and adjectives do not take plurals.

Speaking of three car garages and million man marches...

Outhouses with room for more than one are called, incrimentally, two holers, three holers, etc.
Forgive the unfortunate images that conjures but my point is that a 'two hole outhouse' is often called simply a 'two holer'. Just as a bicycle or auto could be a 'two seater' or a card game a 'four hander'. And a ten pound note a 'tenner'.

Would you say a 'two seater sportscar' or a 'two seat sportscar'?
A MacLaren three seater or a three seat MacLaren?
How about a thirty passenger bus?
Or a 500 passenger 747?

It seems the problem may be the original example of the ten pound note. 'Pound' is very often left 'singular' in a variety of British dialects which we Colonials might see in movies or on TV. A character might say, 'I owe him a hundred pound' or 'he lent me twenty pound'.

Leaving the 's' off 'pounds' (no 'notes' in sight at all) seems to be a familiar colourful colloqialism. So our thinking about the example 'ten pound note' is coloured by that familiarity, or vice versa. 'Two seater bicycle' is equally familiar in its own way and they do each seem to approach the problem differently - grammatical analysis wise.

As always 'usage is the only authourity'.

jwf

Since we are in doubt here, we need to identify some properties of adjectives which can be used to find out if a given word can be called an adjective. Using 'gas', 'ten-pound' then 'brown' as examples gives us the following:

Can it qualify a noun? Apparently - Yes - Yes
Can it form a predicate? No - No - Yes
(In other words, you can't say 'The cylinder is gas', or 'The bag of potatoes is ten-pound,' but 'The bag of potatoes is brown' is fine.)
Can it undergo comparison? No way - No - Yes
Does it have to appear right next to the noun? Yes - Yes (I think) - No
(The more 'detachable' one of these words is, the more likely it is to be considered an adjective.)
Leading on from this, is it an inherent description of the noun? Yes - Not really - No
The last one was a bit vague, but think about 'a brown ten-pound gas cylinder'. Notice the stress - its on 'gas', the first part of the last element of the phrase. 'Gas cylinder' is therefore a compound noun: 'gas' fails the test miserably, 'ten-pound' fails to convince, and 'brown' passes easily.

Hmm, did I open a can of worms today?

A clarification: I wouldn't dream of trying to make an adjective plural. What I want to know is why the 'compound adjective' (if that's what it is) is "ten-pound" in the first place? I'm suggesting that logically it should be "ten-pounds" which, acting as an adjective, is neither singular nor plural. "Ten" is an adjective, and it has been 'compounded' with "pound", but the noun should 'agree' with adjective, so it should be "ten-pounds".

I'm sure that hasn't clarified anything. Where's TC when you need her?

It's easier just to think of the last phrase you use - 'a brown ten-pound gas cylinder' - and to try different permutations of that phrase.

'a brown ten-pound gas cylinder'
'a brown gas ten-pound cylinder'
'a ten-pound brown gas cylinder'
'a ten-pound gas brown cylinder'
'a gas ten-pound brown cylinder'
'a gas brown ten-pound cylinder'


The position of ten-pound and brown can be exchanged readily without changing the meaning. However gas and cylinder can not be separated without either changing the meaning entirely or losing the meaning altogether. Therefore "gas cylinder" is a compound noun and within this context "brown" and "ten-pound" are used as adjectives.

OK, if you want a simple answer, that would be enough to show that 'ten-pound' is used like an adjective. Perhaps I'm going into too much depth by trying to find out whether it *is* an adjective or not.

This has made me think about "plural" adjectives....

You'd think that a farm that raised Pigs would be a Pigs Farm no...

Sheep Farm? no again....

Aha - the Monopolies Commision (or does that come out as a Compound Noun?)

Hmmm... I can't actually think of a noun used as an adjective that takes the plural form... (unless Men's Room counts....)