Syntactic function NPadN
a complex noun preceding and modifying a nominal expression.
Adnominal noun phrases are common, but the recurrent question is to what extent their adnominal fucntion should be regarded as "lexicalised". In "the emperor's new concubine" "emperor" is not in our lexicalised sense adnominal, but if one were to call a concubine "imperial concubine", in Chinese, then the word for "imperial" (probably the same as that for "emperor" would count as adnominal, and in particular as a denominal adjective "nadN". Note that whenever an binome can function both as VP and as NP, the distinction between NPadN and VPadN becomes not only problematic but in many cases quite uninteresting.
Usage
- Lexical entries:
- Found 442 attributions