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In linguistics, a modifier is an optional element in phrase structure or clause structure [1] which modifies the meaning of another element in the structure. For instance, the adjective "red" acts as a modifier in the noun phrase "red ball", providing extra details about which particular ball is being referred to.
Noun adjuncts (nouns qualifying another noun) also generally come before the nouns they modify: in a phrase like book club, the adjunct (modifier) book comes before the head (modified noun) club. By contrast, prepositional phrases , adverbs of location, etc., as well as relative clauses , come after the nouns they modify: the elephant in the ...
Words that function as compound adjectives may modify a noun or a noun phrase.Take the English examples heavy metal detector and heavy-metal detector.The former example contains only the bare adjective heavy to describe a device that is properly written as metal detector; the latter example contains the phrase heavy-metal, which is a compound noun that is ordinarily rendered as heavy metal ...
Special rules apply when multiple compound nouns with the same "head" are used together, often with a conjunction (and with hyphens and commas if they are needed). The third- and fourth-grade teachers met with the parents. Both full- and part-time employees will get raises this year. We don't see many 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children around here.
The adjectival noun term was formerly synonymous with noun adjunct but now usually means nominalized adjective (i.e., an adjective used as a noun) as a term that contrasts the noun adjunct process, e.g. the Irish meaning "Irish people" or the poor meaning "poor people". [citation needed] Japanese adjectival nouns are a different concept.
In some languages, nouns in the genitive case also agree in case with the nouns they modify (that is, it is marked for two cases). This phenomenon is called suffixaufnahme. In some languages, nouns in the genitive case may be found in inclusio – that is, between the main noun's article and the noun itself.
Inflection of the Scottish Gaelic lexeme for 'dog', which is cù for singular, chù for dual with the number dà ('two'), and coin for plural. In linguistic morphology, inflection (less commonly, inflexion) is a process of word formation [1] in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and ...
In the modern varieties of Arabic (using illi placed after the modified noun); in Chinese (using de placed before the modified noun). Use of a relative pronoun. Prototypically, a relative pronoun agrees with the head noun in gender, number, definiteness, animacy, etc., but adopts the case that the shared noun assumes in the embedded, not matrix ...