Edited due to the word brick being an noun or an adjective.
Take the following sentence. The Umbrella Corporation holds a science fair every year.
I am curious to know if people think "science fair" is a compound noun or not.
But if someone wanted to duel over it, well, I'd just agree it's a modified noun. I'll duel over "party line," though.
(Out of curiosity, why does it matter to your story?)
I think it's best to err on the side of what's conventional. In your case, "science fair" is the conventional nomenclature. Otherwise you may detract the reader from what's important.
It has nothing to do with a story but a discussion between me and some grammarians. As posted, it is a stupid question, but one I'd like to have an answer to anyway.
It's like snowman. Snow describes the kind of man it is, but snow is still a noun.
Maybe some google search would find linguistic theory about when one can join two words. Joining a subject with an event seems to result in two words:
Math class
Soccer game
Science fair
Billiards tournament
Don't know if that is a rule or just my limited brainpower (or is it brain power?).
None of those would be compounded...
More examples of noun-noun combinations:
Bus stop
Railway (or railroad) station
Car park (but I'm slightly less sure about "parking garage"; I'm always cautious with apparent gerunds, which can be adjectival despite technically being nouns; other examples would be "retaining wall" or "diving board", but not "running man")
cheese sandwich
Generally, the first noun specifies the nature of the second noun, which tends to be more generic. You can look at breaking them down by rephrasing them as things like "a stop for buses" or "a sandwich with cheese" or "a board for diving", which shows clearly the double noun pattern. So a science fair is "a fair for science" (or "a fair about science").
Thats my interpretation, anyway.
So you could argue that science imparts meaning to the noun compound, as a flavor to the main component, the fair itself.
Kinda like "cell phone," which is losing it's "cell" of late...
Science is both noun and adjective at the same time. Just as state is in state fair. What kind of fair is it? A science one. Science is modifying fair. One can say, "I'm going to a fair," and still mean a science fair. One can't say (unless it's funny) "I'm going to a science." The two nouns are not equal.
Now let's take cat-dog, they aren't inseperable, they modify each other and create a new entity. (Science fair is a kind of fair, cat isn't a kind of dog.) You can't say, "pet my cat," and mean a cat-dog. I think the hyphen should only be used in these cases.
Now I'm going to say something that you may have to think about. Adjectives are nouns. Every last one of them. They are nouns that lend their essence to another noun.
As for the cat-dog thing, I think the overall idea would work even on nonhyphenated, separate compound nouns.
There is a difference between Part of Speech and function. I am sorry to argue but "science" is not an adjective; it is still a noun that functions in this sentence as a noun modifyer, which can be a noun, adjective, article, verb, or several types of clauses or phrases.
I did find part of it (cuss warning) here:
http://archives.hwg.org/hwg-graphics/Pine.BSF.3.96.980707043056.14052K-100000@kens.com
The parts about using it as a preposition and a conjunction are missing from this version.
Which also lead me to this nicely exampled grammar site:
http://www.writingcentre.uottawa.ca/hypergrammar/partsp.html
Cleaned Example: "You can prick your finger, but you can't..."
If you like Carlin, Class Clown is a worthy purchase.
"John pitched the pitch-covered ball as intently as though he were fighting a pitched battle, while Mary, singing in a high-pitched voice, pitched a tent."
Thank you, Robert Nowall.
Or are we mixing terms? I was always taught that a noun modifier is indeed a noun (although I've never seen noun modifiers be anything but nouns modifying another noun). While "science" in "science fair" definitely fits the bill for a noun modifier (the fair isn't science but the big fair is big), why should it just be considered part of a compound noun instead of a noun modifier?
And speaking of parts of speech being different from function, where is the definition of a noun that shows them as being modifiers? Modifiers tend to come in two flavors: adjective and adverb. Noun modifiers sound like somebody muddled up the difference between adjectives and nouns. This whole concept of language and communication is crashing down around my ears!
Screw it. I'm learning Esperanto.
One of the most common changes seen these days is referred to as verbifying nouns (as in "I googled the subject to learn more about it" or "We had to be quiet, so we texted each other.")
quote:
Philocinemas, I tend to think that function in a sentence determines what part of speech something is. You used the words "red" and "green" in your post as adjectives. They are also the colors of Christmas. Colors are things, and things are nouns. Is the word "silver" in a "silver ring" an adjective or a noun modifier? "Silver" is a noun but it is also an adjective.
"Colours are things" - well, not really. Can you actually have a "red"? Sure, some colour words can be nouns - e.g. a green (as on a golf course), but the colour itself is an adjective, a descriptor. In your example - silver is a noun when it refers to the metal, but not when it refers to the colour; a "silver ring" can therefore be either a noun-noun combination, if it is actually made of silver, or an adjective-noun combination, if it is merely a ring that has a silver colour (the latter meaning would be unusual, perhaps: but you might, for instance, describe a car as "silver", and no-one would think you actually meant the car was made of silver).
I call shenanigans.
"Now, science children! put on your science goggles and your science gloves and turn on your science tesla coils. It's time to do some science!"
To me a noun modifier is a noun being used as an adjective, that makes it an adjective. Just as using an article as a noun makes The a noun. (The is the first name of one of my characters. Yes, it did drive The to a life of villainy.) Function is form.
Whether or not a noun premodifier or attributive noun is truly an adjective or only behaving as one is a semantic argument for grammarians over a glass of scotch in the corner booth of a seedy bar.
I recently found myself in the middle of a heated debate of editors wincing at writers omitting the oxford comma. Later that day, I read a develish short story about a temp worker filling in for Satan while he attended to personal business. It had a few typos in it -- and I must admit -- I found my time better spent reading that tale than discussing tomatoes vs to-mah-toes.
I guess grammar, like politics and religion, is the subject of irreconcilable differences and passionate discussions.
quote:
Philocinemas, I tend to think that function in a sentence determines what part of speech something is.
You can say:
A science is a type of knowledge. (OR) The science was very sound.
But you cannot say:
A go is fun. (Unless you are referring to a Japanese game - Belinda Carlisle would require two Go's)
The word science is always a noun, no matter how you slice it, unless you add a suffix of some kind. Many words can be other parts of speech depending on how they are used in a sentence (their function), but words that start as nouns tend to be less versatile. In this case, science functions as a modifyer to tell you what kind of fair similarly to how book can tell you what kind of store. However, science is no less of a noun than book is. The words science fair are two nouns that describe one thing. That is why it is a compound noun.
And yes, you can say "a red":
I was coloring with my son and he asked me to hand him a red.
However, if you were talking about the red store, then red functions as an adjective. The function can change the part of speech in which the word is used, if the word can be another part of speech - red can be a noun or an adjective. Otherwise, the word serves a certain function within the sentence while still retaining its designated part of speech. The word science in this case is referred to as a noun modifyer even though it is a noun.
Example:
Our book store is big.
- Our is a pronoun that also functions as a noun modifyer
- book is a noun that functions as a noun modifyer
- store is a noun that functions as the subject
- is is a linking verb
- big is an adjective that also modifies the subject
One way of viewing the difference between function and part of speech is to compare subject to noun, which are not always the same.
Edited due to the word brick being an noun or an adjective.
[This message has been edited by philocinemas (edited July 06, 2011).]
quote:
But you cannot say:
A go is fun.
Now it's my go.
Not having a go at you, but I think you'll find go can be a noun.
Edit: Originally a reply to philocinemas' post that was edited before I replied.
[This message has been edited by DavidS (edited July 06, 2011).]
[This message has been edited by DavidS (edited July 06, 2011).]
My tennis ball is yellow.
However, my basketball is orange.
There is no good reason why tennis ball is two words and basketball is one word. Both of these are compound nouns with another noun modifying the word ball. The only difference is how we do or don't combine them.