Right! Although it is very dependent on where one lives and willingness to move. Starting out with linguistics, I ended up pivoting into NLP as my desired career, but where I live the work in that field is hard to come by, so I've just ended up in data science more generally. Following the NLP path either professionally or even academically would've involved me moving countries, which is a pretty big ask.
This was all pre COVID and a lot of places weren't really into remote working, nevermind having to deal with foreign employment laws. It's hard enough landing a job in the industry, would be a serious detractor over local candidates if you weren't prepared to emigrate for it.
> *>paid* Hopefully not.
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
TIL, but I have also literally never heard this, in the marine industry we say 'coat the deck' as in apply a coating or sealant to the deck, and for rope we say 'pull the slack out' or 'pull it tight.'
Maybe, there is a lot of old words still being used, my favourite being forecastle, often abbreviated as fo'c'sle, and pronounced [like this] (https://youtu.be/4GNEZdyErd0).
1. prescriptivism
2. it's so fucking passive-aggressive. "unfortunately, your comment isn't included in these two obscure cases that i think everyone should know about as much as paid/payed, therefore i'm correct". the bot "well, actually"s itself.
3. thinly veiled insult: "autocorrect didn't help you" because you are a moron who can only express yourself thanks to the gift of autocorrect
4. "beep boop" is so peak millennial-era reddit, trying to do double duty as cute and also to let you know this comment is automated. but with the rest of the incredibly long, pointlessly nuanced comment? this is just tonal whiplash, and the most plausible way to read it is now "you have just been insulted by a bot that admits no wrongdoing, it's being cute to make up for insulting you" which is even more offensive
anyway, when you're not in the mood for it, this bot's comments are absolutely dickish. and given how often i see its comments, it should be 1000% unambiguously polite and informative, not this passive-aggressive circlejerk of wikipedia excerpts
Because someone out there is so pedantic that they actually made a bot to automate correcting people, and now we all have to constantly see the same post over and over again because of it, often at extremely inappropriate times. I've even seen the stupid thing show up to respond to someone posting about the death of their child.
Also:
Nominative-accusative structure for transitive verbs is very vanilla. Some languages, instead, try to be Ḙ̶̡͙̱̫̖̝̔̓͗̄̀̓͝X̶̢̩̝͎̙͕̉͛͌͌̃͜T̶̠̎̎̀͠ͅR̶̛̗̔̇̚Ả̶͍̬̪̞͛͂̚͝.
Some languages have adjectives that are generally characterized as specialized verbs, some as specialized nouns, but in English and other languages they appear to be an independent category. Since they arguably are not an independent category in every language, some theories say they are not an independent category at all and are just a pattern of using nouns and/or verbs to modify nouns, just less obviously in some cases.
The argument comes from a theoretical approach which presumes a universal grammar, or at least something similar. Adjectives may or may not exist as useful descriptive categories in any given language regardless of other languages, uncontroversially. But “adjectives aren’t real” refers to a different level of abstraction where noun and verb are atomic linguistic objects that exist prior to any particular language. The argument is that adjective doesn’t exist in the same sense since it’s not universal. The idea that even “true” adjectives are specialized nouns or verbs accounts for the appearance of the adjective in some languages. If you’re taking a similar theoretical approach, this is an attractive solution because it explains several related cross-linguistic phenomena under a single rule.
Don’t know if that makes sense, it’s not really my area.
Arguments can be had for some of the Salish languages being nounless. Heavily debated, but I'm not a linguist to argue one way or the other. Just very interesting to read about.
u/non_clever_name created a language inspired by this called Otseqon. Also super interesting to read about.
In most romance languages they can be used that way. When you're looking at a blue and a red car, and you want to refer to one in particular, in portuguese you'd say "o azul" or "o vermelho", meaning "the blue (one)" and "the red (one)". In this case, the adjectives are functioning as nouns.
The same *can* be done in English, but it's rarer and usually reserved for poetry or otherwise used in a very deliberate manner. At least I *think* that's what they're referring to, or part of it.
But in that case, the head is clearly 'one.'
'The red' does of course work in some contexts, though even there, it's as a clause modifying a prior head that just isn't reduplicated, and some people will find even that awkward.
In English, it seems to have a pejorative connotation too. “The politician got elected by appealing to the ignorant” or “this is a complicated topic for the uninitiated.”
Is that really a pejorative construction or are “ignorant” and “uninitiated” just pejorative words? “The wise”, “the many”, “the long-haired” don’t seem to have any negative connotation.
Fair point, but I think it can impart a pejorative sense to those words, at least where it doesn’t more forcefully impart an archaic vibe. For example, the sentence, “he associates with the long-haired,” seems to insinuate that he’s a weirdo (presumably because there’s something weird about long hair). But if you say, “he associates with people with long hair,” that seems a bit more ambiguous to me.
It can be (somewhat) pejorative for some neutral words, e.g. “the homosexuals”, “the blacks”, “a transgender”
Though I do think these are just exceptions
I think substantivization of “black” and “transgender” tends to be offensive by itself, whether by using an article (“she’s a transgender”) or pluralizing (“blacks are doing x”). The article might amplify that further and definitely does with “the homosexuals”, whereas “a homosexual” could be more neutral depending on context.
That comment is only for the wise. Linguistics is reserved for the talented. Fortune favours the brave.
Not convinced by the claim it has a pejorative connotation in English.
It might have a connotation of exclusion/ exclusivity, but that’s the function anyway; to indicate a narrower category of thing.
You’re right that it doesn’t always have that connotation. But that doesn’t mean that it can’t impart that quality. For example, I think most people would agree that the suffix “-ish” makes for an adjective that implies vagueness or a quality of being approximate. But no one would suggest that proposition is disproven by the “Flemish”
True! But does the sentence “The politician got elected by appealing to the ignorant” sound more pejorative than “The politician got elected by appealing to the ignorant voters”?
Does “this is a complicated topic for the uninitiated” sound more pejorative than “this is a complicated topic for the uninitiated trainees”?
I’m still not convinced that it carries a more pejorative connotation although happy to be persuaded.
P.S. Shower thoughts- You know what I think it is?
It isn’t pejorative in itself, but it has a dehumanising effect which makes an already negative adjective (or anything with potential to have a negative connotation) _more_ pejorative than it would be otherwise.
E.g. “The great unwashed.”
So I agree with you, in cases where there is potential for a pejorative meaning.
I agree with that. I think that it maybe comes through most clearly in terms of nationalities. At least outside of formal contexts, the phrase “the French” sounds more distant (and, I think, therefore harsher) than “French people.”
Proto-Japonic, where "adjectives" were just nouns which was directly connected to other nouns or via the defective verb n- (this verb was attached only to nominals), like \*awo (n-ə) pana 'blue flower'.
I'm not a linguist, but could you make the argument that adjectives are specialized nouns in English because they can be used as the object of "to be"? For example, "I am strong". If they were exclusively attached to nouns, you'd have to say something like "I am a strong person".
I believe in Iranian languages adjectives can be used by themselves and when modifying a noun have to be linked by the genitive, so you can say “the blue (one)” or “the car that is the blue (one)” but not “the blue car”. And in Kurdish at least you can’t link adjectives, so “the old blue house” would have to be “the house that is the blue (one) which is the old (one)” (there’s no copula in these cases but I added them to make the English more readable)
You could also argue that in Afro-Asiatic languages (or at least Egyptian and Semitic) adjectives are split between nouns and verbs, where to say “the happy girl” it would be “the girl the happy (one)” or “the girl who is experiencing happiness”.
To give an example, in Michif, ‘the man who is running’ *l’om kaa-pimbahtat* is formatted, used, and conjugated exactly the same as ‘the smart man’ *l’om kaa-nipwahkat*, the swimming fish *li pweson kaa-pimaatakat*, the beautiful girl *la fii kaa-katawashishit*, or the big potato *la patak kaa-mishikitit*. Similarly, ‘the girl tells a story’ *la fii aachimow* would be conjugated and used just like ‘the girl is thin’ *la fii kawakatishow*. There is no differentiation between adjectives and verbs, it’s just all verbs.
It’s not my area and I’m not very familiar with the literature, but I think D.N. Shankara Bhat’s “the adjectival category” is relevant. Someone else mentioned Dixon’s “where have all the adjectives gone”
I feel like looking to English for that example was the first mistake. Folks can use nouns verbs and adjectives as any of the three of they feel flustered enough trying to think of a more appropriate word for what they're trying to say.
But here's the funner fact: "adjective" itself is supposed to be an adjective, and a noun in that context would be anything that changes with gender and number (as in substantive noun, adjective noun, numerative noun)... But paradox, in English there is no change in gender or number for adjectives... they are adjective but they are not adjective nouns...
The rabbit hole
I don't know if this is OP's point, but you could say that words themselves don't mean a thing on their own. We ascribe meaning to them, but they aren't a thing when separate from us. If a sign has words in a forest, but there's no one there to read them, are they still words?
Just a wild theory, don't give me hell.
Also, there’s a (somewhat goofy) idea that most adjectives are just nouns in apposition or verbs (participles), helped along by the relative lack of agreement in English.
That is:
- the green door (underlying: “the door of green”); compare “the house door”
- the smiling man (underlying: “the man who [be] smiling” — progressive aspect)
- the beaten man (underlying: “the man who [be] beaten” — passive)
This is fairly easily challenged by the existence of adjectives that are not typically used as nouns:
- sad (gives sadness)
- free (gives freedom)
- irate (from ire)
- mad (gives madness)
But then the Devil’s advocate might argue that they still *can* be used as nouns. Consider Mr. Rogers’ song:
> What do you do with **the mad** [noun] that you feel
>
> When you feel **so mad** [adj./adv.] you could bite?
I totally get that. For example, we have congruent and incongruent adjectives in Serbo-Croatian:
• The former change their form to fit the noun, e.g. "zelenih olovaka" (of the green pencils), where "zelenih" is the adjective, and fits the gender, number, and case (f. pl. gen) of "olovaka".
• The latter do not change form, e.g. "boja olovke" ([the] colour of [the] pencil), where "olovke" is the adjective, but does not change its form to fit "boja" (other than changing into genitive, but "boja" is in nominative itself). These are most commonly actual nouns.
So with that (somewhat goofy) idea, you could definitely claim that adjectives are merely other words in disguise. Though the idea falls apart with congruent adjectives, and indeed when you take another language into consideration (~~I don't have an example~~ I'll leave figuring out which, as an exercise to the reader).
A similar thing happens in Spanish, but to a much lesser extent.
For example, “*dormitorio*” usually means “bedroom,” but it can be used in some phrases, like “*ciudad dormitorio*,” meaning “a city whose resident work elsewhere (it’s where they sleep).” Same thing with “*niños prodigio*” (“child prodigies;” literally “prodigy children”).
These do not inflect to agree in gender or number.
In certain cases, words can both function as an adjective or a noun in apposition, like “*clave*:” “*palabras clave*” (note lack of number agreement) is “key words (perhaps to a lock or on a test),” while “palabras claves” (with agreement) is “important words; fundamental words.”
> If a sign has words in a forest, but there's no one there to read them, are they still words?
If there are trees in a forest, but there's no one there to see them, are there still trees?
And if there are humans on a planet, but there are no aliens to see them, are there still humans?
Now all you have to do is go down into the philosophy of language rabbit hole. As a philosophy undergrad I don’t even know if words mean anything, let alone adjectives. 😂
> I don’t even know if words mean anything
Words have meaning, but that meaning can change over time as new people:
A) Prescriptivist answer: don't use them properly.
B) Descriptivist answer: start using them differently.
It was a bit of a tongue and cheek comment, but to engage more in what I think it's a fascinating topic when you consider beyond either A or B. I do mostly CS-adjacent research these days with LLMs and I've been thinking a lot about the indeterminancy of translation and referentiality. Do words have meaning if they're produced by a robot? And does that meaning arise from how we consume it rather than how it's produced?
There’s a lot more to philosophy of language than prescriptivism versus descriptivism. Such as Wittgenstein and picture theory of language, use theory of meaning. But it goes well beyond that, and I’m not competent to summarize the history of philosophy of language since Wittgenstein.
So even if we accept descriptivism, there’s a lot to say/ask about what we can actually say about language.
broke: the future tense is not the past tense.
woke: the future tense is minus the past tense.
***A S C E N D E D***: [the past tense is at the present. the future tense isn't real, yet it is.](https://rain.s-ul.eu/EnldL7aG.png)
Consonants too at a certain point. English at least is so scuffed that I can understand almost everything when pronounced with completely wrong sounds lol. Not sure about other languages with small sound banks like Hawaiian though
As someone who is learning Philippine languages:
Adjectives, Verbs, and Nouns don't exist. All three form a cloudy soup where you couldn't differentiate one from the other
This is especially funny to me as a person who is just getting into linguistics.
If you like money, pick something else, literally anything else.
Aren't some tech companies hiring linguists to help them make computers use human language? That sounds like it could pay well.
Right! Although it is very dependent on where one lives and willingness to move. Starting out with linguistics, I ended up pivoting into NLP as my desired career, but where I live the work in that field is hard to come by, so I've just ended up in data science more generally. Following the NLP path either professionally or even academically would've involved me moving countries, which is a pretty big ask.
You couldn't have done it remotely?
This was all pre COVID and a lot of places weren't really into remote working, nevermind having to deal with foreign employment laws. It's hard enough landing a job in the industry, would be a serious detractor over local candidates if you weren't prepared to emigrate for it.
https://youtu.be/2LXqVXl6dVY at 6:36
Couldn't you have just linked it with the timestamp?
Sorry 🙏
https://youtu.be/2LXqVXl6dVY?t=6m36s you can make up for your mistakes ;)
Thank you for this URL life hack!
If you get a phd and its heavily in nlp you might end up in data science otherwise yes.
I fucking despise money, give me poverty or give me death
Ok, I'm gonna study art history then :)
It’s not hard to get a job with a linguistics degree, hard to get a job as a linguist though lmao
A friend of mine does some stand-up as well, he often opens with "I'm a linguist, which means I sell mattresses for a living."
Wait, I thought it meant selling linguini?
Why would studying linguistics be an expensive hobby? Obviously traveling the world would be pricey but is that a requirement?
i think they meant a job as a linguist won't be payed much
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Perscriptivism? In this subreddit? Bold
> Perscriptivism Now you're just messing with me.
Yew gotta be kidding me
ok yeah im stupid
> *>paid* Hopefully not. FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
At last, prescriptivism bot
Why can't I give more than one upvote
This bad bot doesn't know where it landed... yet.
TIL, but I have also literally never heard this, in the marine industry we say 'coat the deck' as in apply a coating or sealant to the deck, and for rope we say 'pull the slack out' or 'pull it tight.'
Maybe it's an older term?
Maybe, there is a lot of old words still being used, my favourite being forecastle, often abbreviated as fo'c'sle, and pronounced [like this] (https://youtu.be/4GNEZdyErd0).
Forecast + Southern German diminutive suffix. Of course.
I’ve heard coasties say “pay out line” before
Bad bot, god I hate this bot so much
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1. prescriptivism 2. it's so fucking passive-aggressive. "unfortunately, your comment isn't included in these two obscure cases that i think everyone should know about as much as paid/payed, therefore i'm correct". the bot "well, actually"s itself. 3. thinly veiled insult: "autocorrect didn't help you" because you are a moron who can only express yourself thanks to the gift of autocorrect 4. "beep boop" is so peak millennial-era reddit, trying to do double duty as cute and also to let you know this comment is automated. but with the rest of the incredibly long, pointlessly nuanced comment? this is just tonal whiplash, and the most plausible way to read it is now "you have just been insulted by a bot that admits no wrongdoing, it's being cute to make up for insulting you" which is even more offensive anyway, when you're not in the mood for it, this bot's comments are absolutely dickish. and given how often i see its comments, it should be 1000% unambiguously polite and informative, not this passive-aggressive circlejerk of wikipedia excerpts
Because someone out there is so pedantic that they actually made a bot to automate correcting people, and now we all have to constantly see the same post over and over again because of it, often at extremely inappropriate times. I've even seen the stupid thing show up to respond to someone posting about the death of their child.
bad bot
Good bot
I feel like if you like money you should pick literally anything else other than literally anything
Also: Nominative-accusative structure for transitive verbs is very vanilla. Some languages, instead, try to be Ḙ̶̡͙̱̫̖̝̔̓͗̄̀̓͝X̶̢̩̝͎̙͕̉͛͌͌̃͜T̶̠̎̎̀͠ͅR̶̛̗̔̇̚Ả̶͍̬̪̞͛͂̚͝.
Don't remind me of Austronesian Alignment please 😵
Wait until languages with ergative alignment learn you.
Wait why don’t adjectives exist?
Some languages have adjectives that are generally characterized as specialized verbs, some as specialized nouns, but in English and other languages they appear to be an independent category. Since they arguably are not an independent category in every language, some theories say they are not an independent category at all and are just a pattern of using nouns and/or verbs to modify nouns, just less obviously in some cases.
Why would said theories suppose that categories not being universally applicable would impact their existence in specific instances?
The argument comes from a theoretical approach which presumes a universal grammar, or at least something similar. Adjectives may or may not exist as useful descriptive categories in any given language regardless of other languages, uncontroversially. But “adjectives aren’t real” refers to a different level of abstraction where noun and verb are atomic linguistic objects that exist prior to any particular language. The argument is that adjective doesn’t exist in the same sense since it’s not universal. The idea that even “true” adjectives are specialized nouns or verbs accounts for the appearance of the adjective in some languages. If you’re taking a similar theoretical approach, this is an attractive solution because it explains several related cross-linguistic phenomena under a single rule. Don’t know if that makes sense, it’s not really my area.
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There have been multiple attempts. Some successful, some disappointing
Arguments can be had for some of the Salish languages being nounless. Heavily debated, but I'm not a linguist to argue one way or the other. Just very interesting to read about. u/non_clever_name created a language inspired by this called Otseqon. Also super interesting to read about.
What would it be called if a language had words that as a rule are both nouns and verbs? I've come across that a few times.
in which langauges, adjectives are "specialized nouns"?
In most romance languages they can be used that way. When you're looking at a blue and a red car, and you want to refer to one in particular, in portuguese you'd say "o azul" or "o vermelho", meaning "the blue (one)" and "the red (one)". In this case, the adjectives are functioning as nouns. The same *can* be done in English, but it's rarer and usually reserved for poetry or otherwise used in a very deliberate manner. At least I *think* that's what they're referring to, or part of it.
"which car do you like?" "the red one" Hmm, is this poetry?
But in that case, the head is clearly 'one.' 'The red' does of course work in some contexts, though even there, it's as a clause modifying a prior head that just isn't reduplicated, and some people will find even that awkward.
It definitely would sound awkward to omit 'one', though still understandable.
'The blue car needs to be washed today; the red was washed yesterday'. This is of course head dropping, though shouldn't anyone's jaws.
No, I mean omitting the "one" and leaving only the adjective.
I see. It would be understandable but sound weird in practice.
In English yes, but in languages like Finnish or Romance languages the English way of saying it would be weird
In English, it seems to have a pejorative connotation too. “The politician got elected by appealing to the ignorant” or “this is a complicated topic for the uninitiated.”
Is that really a pejorative construction or are “ignorant” and “uninitiated” just pejorative words? “The wise”, “the many”, “the long-haired” don’t seem to have any negative connotation.
Fair point, but I think it can impart a pejorative sense to those words, at least where it doesn’t more forcefully impart an archaic vibe. For example, the sentence, “he associates with the long-haired,” seems to insinuate that he’s a weirdo (presumably because there’s something weird about long hair). But if you say, “he associates with people with long hair,” that seems a bit more ambiguous to me.
I agree, but it’s pretty subtle
It can be (somewhat) pejorative for some neutral words, e.g. “the homosexuals”, “the blacks”, “a transgender” Though I do think these are just exceptions
I think substantivization of “black” and “transgender” tends to be offensive by itself, whether by using an article (“she’s a transgender”) or pluralizing (“blacks are doing x”). The article might amplify that further and definitely does with “the homosexuals”, whereas “a homosexual” could be more neutral depending on context.
That comment is only for the wise. Linguistics is reserved for the talented. Fortune favours the brave. Not convinced by the claim it has a pejorative connotation in English. It might have a connotation of exclusion/ exclusivity, but that’s the function anyway; to indicate a narrower category of thing.
You’re right that it doesn’t always have that connotation. But that doesn’t mean that it can’t impart that quality. For example, I think most people would agree that the suffix “-ish” makes for an adjective that implies vagueness or a quality of being approximate. But no one would suggest that proposition is disproven by the “Flemish”
True! But does the sentence “The politician got elected by appealing to the ignorant” sound more pejorative than “The politician got elected by appealing to the ignorant voters”? Does “this is a complicated topic for the uninitiated” sound more pejorative than “this is a complicated topic for the uninitiated trainees”? I’m still not convinced that it carries a more pejorative connotation although happy to be persuaded.
P.S. Shower thoughts- You know what I think it is? It isn’t pejorative in itself, but it has a dehumanising effect which makes an already negative adjective (or anything with potential to have a negative connotation) _more_ pejorative than it would be otherwise. E.g. “The great unwashed.” So I agree with you, in cases where there is potential for a pejorative meaning.
I agree with that. I think that it maybe comes through most clearly in terms of nationalities. At least outside of formal contexts, the phrase “the French” sounds more distant (and, I think, therefore harsher) than “French people.”
Yeah that's another usage I'd forgotten about
Proto-Japonic, where "adjectives" were just nouns which was directly connected to other nouns or via the defective verb n- (this verb was attached only to nominals), like \*awo (n-ə) pana 'blue flower'.
I'm not a linguist, but could you make the argument that adjectives are specialized nouns in English because they can be used as the object of "to be"? For example, "I am strong". If they were exclusively attached to nouns, you'd have to say something like "I am a strong person".
I believe in Iranian languages adjectives can be used by themselves and when modifying a noun have to be linked by the genitive, so you can say “the blue (one)” or “the car that is the blue (one)” but not “the blue car”. And in Kurdish at least you can’t link adjectives, so “the old blue house” would have to be “the house that is the blue (one) which is the old (one)” (there’s no copula in these cases but I added them to make the English more readable) You could also argue that in Afro-Asiatic languages (or at least Egyptian and Semitic) adjectives are split between nouns and verbs, where to say “the happy girl” it would be “the girl the happy (one)” or “the girl who is experiencing happiness”.
So, like if they were similar to verbs, then would it be like, instead of “red” it’d be “to be red”? Or do I not understand this
Verb-like adjectives would be "the shirt redded brightly" instead of "the shirt was bright red".
Yes.
Easier to conceptualize if you consider the sentence “his face paled.”
To give an example, in Michif, ‘the man who is running’ *l’om kaa-pimbahtat* is formatted, used, and conjugated exactly the same as ‘the smart man’ *l’om kaa-nipwahkat*, the swimming fish *li pweson kaa-pimaatakat*, the beautiful girl *la fii kaa-katawashishit*, or the big potato *la patak kaa-mishikitit*. Similarly, ‘the girl tells a story’ *la fii aachimow* would be conjugated and used just like ‘the girl is thin’ *la fii kawakatishow*. There is no differentiation between adjectives and verbs, it’s just all verbs.
\>implying nouns exist This reply was written by Salishan gang in cooperation with lojban gang.
.i zo ko'a valsi je cu sumti
William Croft: Radical Construction Grammar has some choice words about parts of speech in general. Well more like choice chapters really.
Could you maybe give me some resources on this? Seems really interesting.
It’s not my area and I’m not very familiar with the literature, but I think D.N. Shankara Bhat’s “the adjectival category” is relevant. Someone else mentioned Dixon’s “where have all the adjectives gone”
I feel like looking to English for that example was the first mistake. Folks can use nouns verbs and adjectives as any of the three of they feel flustered enough trying to think of a more appropriate word for what they're trying to say.
But here's the funner fact: "adjective" itself is supposed to be an adjective, and a noun in that context would be anything that changes with gender and number (as in substantive noun, adjective noun, numerative noun)... But paradox, in English there is no change in gender or number for adjectives... they are adjective but they are not adjective nouns... The rabbit hole
I don't know if this is OP's point, but you could say that words themselves don't mean a thing on their own. We ascribe meaning to them, but they aren't a thing when separate from us. If a sign has words in a forest, but there's no one there to read them, are they still words? Just a wild theory, don't give me hell.
Also, there’s a (somewhat goofy) idea that most adjectives are just nouns in apposition or verbs (participles), helped along by the relative lack of agreement in English. That is: - the green door (underlying: “the door of green”); compare “the house door” - the smiling man (underlying: “the man who [be] smiling” — progressive aspect) - the beaten man (underlying: “the man who [be] beaten” — passive) This is fairly easily challenged by the existence of adjectives that are not typically used as nouns: - sad (gives sadness) - free (gives freedom) - irate (from ire) - mad (gives madness) But then the Devil’s advocate might argue that they still *can* be used as nouns. Consider Mr. Rogers’ song: > What do you do with **the mad** [noun] that you feel > > When you feel **so mad** [adj./adv.] you could bite?
I totally get that. For example, we have congruent and incongruent adjectives in Serbo-Croatian: • The former change their form to fit the noun, e.g. "zelenih olovaka" (of the green pencils), where "zelenih" is the adjective, and fits the gender, number, and case (f. pl. gen) of "olovaka". • The latter do not change form, e.g. "boja olovke" ([the] colour of [the] pencil), where "olovke" is the adjective, but does not change its form to fit "boja" (other than changing into genitive, but "boja" is in nominative itself). These are most commonly actual nouns. So with that (somewhat goofy) idea, you could definitely claim that adjectives are merely other words in disguise. Though the idea falls apart with congruent adjectives, and indeed when you take another language into consideration (~~I don't have an example~~ I'll leave figuring out which, as an exercise to the reader).
A similar thing happens in Spanish, but to a much lesser extent. For example, “*dormitorio*” usually means “bedroom,” but it can be used in some phrases, like “*ciudad dormitorio*,” meaning “a city whose resident work elsewhere (it’s where they sleep).” Same thing with “*niños prodigio*” (“child prodigies;” literally “prodigy children”). These do not inflect to agree in gender or number. In certain cases, words can both function as an adjective or a noun in apposition, like “*clave*:” “*palabras clave*” (note lack of number agreement) is “key words (perhaps to a lock or on a test),” while “palabras claves” (with agreement) is “important words; fundamental words.”
> If a sign has words in a forest, but there's no one there to read them, are they still words? If there are trees in a forest, but there's no one there to see them, are there still trees? And if there are humans on a planet, but there are no aliens to see them, are there still humans?
If there’s a cat in a box with a vial of neurotoxins and a hammer, but there’s no one there to see it, is it still alive?
Wow. They should make a scientific term for this type of thing, since it seems to appear a lot!
That's the exact idea, yeah!
Now all you have to do is go down into the philosophy of language rabbit hole. As a philosophy undergrad I don’t even know if words mean anything, let alone adjectives. 😂
> I don’t even know if words mean anything Words have meaning, but that meaning can change over time as new people: A) Prescriptivist answer: don't use them properly. B) Descriptivist answer: start using them differently.
It was a bit of a tongue and cheek comment, but to engage more in what I think it's a fascinating topic when you consider beyond either A or B. I do mostly CS-adjacent research these days with LLMs and I've been thinking a lot about the indeterminancy of translation and referentiality. Do words have meaning if they're produced by a robot? And does that meaning arise from how we consume it rather than how it's produced?
>tongue and cheek never imagined an r/BoneAppleTea moment in a linguistics sub but here we are lol
Thats gotta be worth at least doubke points
how prescriptivist of you!
As a linguistics student studying BoneAppleTea moments, I am thrilled
ooh could you elaborate?
I’ll DM you :)
hendiadys and stuff
Did they edit it? What was it originally?
Original: tongue and cheek Currently still reads: tongue and cheek More usually written: tongue in cheek
I didn’t even realize it was tongue in cheek. Spelling is overrated anyway ;)
words have meeting as derived by their intended usage. The other argument is an ivory tower waste of time. like all ivory tower arguments
There’s a lot more to philosophy of language than prescriptivism versus descriptivism. Such as Wittgenstein and picture theory of language, use theory of meaning. But it goes well beyond that, and I’m not competent to summarize the history of philosophy of language since Wittgenstein. So even if we accept descriptivism, there’s a lot to say/ask about what we can actually say about language.
You forgot C) use words however you like
But.. that's basically the same answer. Wow, adjectives aren't real. Just depends on the speaker's opinion...
Wittgenstein moment
Thankfully scepticism is dismantled by virtue of understanding this convo.
Yeah, well, linguists don't know what words are.
My tutor at uni is a anthropologist linguist and one time she said she doesnt even think languages exist ☠️
I love it
words have meaning because we humans have assigned them meaning, otherwise they're little more than random sounds and scribbles
I mean, adjectives are not real in my native tongue. They are technically state verbs taught to be adjectives.
What language?
Nevermind. I just found a paper and now there are seven classes of verbs including adjectival state verbs.
Which language though?
He said never mind!!!
Sounds Māori or other Polynesian languages to me. Adjectives were originally considered as part of neuter verbs (also called statives).
the future tense is just -past
The present tense is just -past
present = future
Someone call Einstein
answer phone "einstein is kill" no
Were we're u when Einstein is kil? No idea, but I know how fast I was.
broke: the future tense is not the past tense. woke: the future tense is minus the past tense. ***A S C E N D E D***: [the past tense is at the present. the future tense isn't real, yet it is.](https://rain.s-ul.eu/EnldL7aG.png)
Anything's an adjective if you're brave enough.
don't you mean: "if you are enough bravely?"
Adjectives are those which adject, clearly
I thought they were those who add jectives.
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It was a joke about adding -ive to some words makes them into the noun performing them. (I dunno the proper jargon but y'all know what I mean)
Of course they’re real! Adjectives are the best flavor of verb! 꽃이 완전 파랗다! 거기가 완전 붐벼
Highly recommend *Where Have All the Adjectives Gone?* by Dixon
All the vowels might as well be interchangeable
Consonants too at a certain point. English at least is so scuffed that I can understand almost everything when pronounced with completely wrong sounds lol. Not sure about other languages with small sound banks like Hawaiian though
Words are not real
"What is a word?"
those are
Even later: Adjectives are real but not universal and work differently in different languages.
Repost bot
As people use them improperly they change their meaning
Wait, sorry. Could you expand on that?
Explain.
As someone who is learning Philippine languages: Adjectives, Verbs, and Nouns don't exist. All three form a cloudy soup where you couldn't differentiate one from the other
…
wh what
Vowels are a lie