A nominalized adjective is an

adjective An adjective (abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that describes or defines a noun or noun phrase. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives are considered one of the main part of speech, parts of ...

that has undergone

nominalization In linguistics, nominalization or nominalisation, also known as nouning, is the use of a word that is not a noun (e.g., a verb, an adjective or an adverb) as a noun, or as the head (linguistics), head of a noun phrase. This change in functional c ...

, and is thus used as a

noun In grammar, a noun is a word that represents a concrete or abstract thing, like living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, and ideas. A noun may serve as an Object (grammar), object or Subject (grammar), subject within a p ...

. In ''the rich and the poor'', the adjectives ''rich'' and ''poor'' function as nouns denoting people who are rich and poor respectively.

In English

The most common appearance of the nominalized adjective in English is when an adjective is used to indicate a collective group. This happens in the case where a phrase such as ''the poor people'' becomes ''the poor''. The adjective ''poor'' is nominalized, and the noun ''people'' disappears. Other adjectives commonly used in this way include ''rich'', ''wealthy'', ''homeless'', ''

disabled Disability is the experience of any condition that makes it more difficult for a person to do certain activities or have equitable access within a given society. Disabilities may be cognitive, developmental, intellectual, mental, physica ...

'', ''blind'', ''deaf'', etc., as well as certain

demonym A demonym (; ) or 'gentilic' () is a word that identifies a group of people ( inhabitants, residents, natives) in relation to a particular place. Demonyms are usually derived from the name of the place ( hamlet, village, town, city, region, ...

s such as ''English'', ''Welsh'', ''Irish'', ''French'', ''Dutch''. Another case is when an adjective is used to denote a single object with the property, as in "you take the long route, and I'll take the ''short''". Here ''the short'' stands for "the short route". A much more common alternative in the modern language is the structure using the prop-word ''one'': "the short one". However, the use of the adjective alone is fairly common in the case of superlatives such as ''biggest'',

ordinal number In set theory, an ordinal number, or ordinal, is a generalization of ordinal numerals (first, second, th, etc.) aimed to extend enumeration to infinite sets. A finite set can be enumerated by successively labeling each element with the leas ...

s such as ''first'', ''second'', etc., and other related words such as ''next'' and ''last''. Many adjectives, though, have undergone conversion so that they can be used regularly as countable nouns; examples include ''Catholic'', ''Protestant'', ''red'' (with various meanings), ''green'', etc.

Historical development

Nominal uses of adjectives have been found to have become less common as the language developed from

Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...

Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman Conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English pe ...

and then

Modern English Modern English, sometimes called New English (NE) or present-day English (PDE) as opposed to Middle and Old English, is the form of the English language that has been spoken since the Great Vowel Shift in England England is a Count ...

. The following table shows the frequency of such uses in different stages of the language: The decline in the use of adjectives as nouns may be attributed to the loss of adjectival

inflection In linguistic Morphology (linguistics), morphology, inflection (less commonly, inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical category, grammatical categories such as grammatical tense, ...

throughout Middle English. In line with the Minimalist Framework elaborated by

Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a ...

, it is suggested that inflected adjectives are more likely to be nominalized because they have overtly-marked φ-features (such as

grammatical number In linguistics, grammatical number is a Feature (linguistics), feature of nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verb agreement (linguistics), agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one", "two" or "three or more"). English and many other ...

and

gender Gender is the range of social, psychological, cultural, and behavioral aspects of being a man (or boy), woman (or girl), or third gender. Although gender often corresponds to sex, a transgender person may identify with a gender other tha ...

), which makes them suitable for use as the complement of a

determiner Determiner, also called determinative ( abbreviated ), is a term used in some models of grammatical description to describe a word or affix belonging to a class of noun modifiers. A determiner combines with a noun to express its reference. Examp ...

. Determiners with unvalued φ-features must find a complement with a valued φ-feature to meet semantic comprehension. In the diagrams below, the determiner is ''the'', and its complement is either the

noun phrase A noun phrase – or NP or nominal (phrase) – is a phrase that usually has a noun or pronoun as its head, and has the same grammatical functions as a noun. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently ...

''poor people'' or the nominalized adjective ''poor''. The capacity of adjectives to be used as nouns is sometimes exploited in puns like The poor rich. As the frequency of nominalized adjective use decreased, the frequency of structures using the prop-word ''one'' increased (phrases such as "the large" were replaced by those of the type "the large one"). In most other languages, there is no comparable prop-word, and nominalized adjectives, which in many cases retain inflectional endings, have remained more common.

In other languages

German

Adjectives in German change their form for various features, such as case and gender, and so agree with the noun that they modify. The adjective ''alt'' (old), for example, develops a separate lexical entry that carries the morphological and syntactic requirements of the head noun that has been removed: the requirements are the

al endings of the language. Here, ''der Alte'' is inflected for masculine gender, singular number and nominative case. ''Den Alten'' is a similar inflection but in the accusative case. The nominalized adjective is derived from the adjective ''alt'' and surfaces as it does by taking the appropriate inflection.

Swedish

Like in English, adjectival nouns are used as a plural definite ("the unemployed") and with nationality words ("the Swedish"). However, Swedish does not require "one or ones" with count nouns ("The old cat is slower than the new (one)"). The use of

, which incorporates the number and the gender of the noun, allows Swedish to avoid the need for a visible noun to describe a noun. That is also true in inflecting adjectival nouns.

Standard use of an adjectival noun

Diagram of a noun phrase with both the noun and the adjective

A noun phrase with both the noun and the adjective. Empty noun

A noun phrase with only the adjectival noun.

Example of indefinite use

Use of number and gender inflection

Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek uses nominalized adjectives without a "dummy" or generic noun like English "one(s)" or "thing(s)". The adjective that modifies the noun carries information about gender, number and case and so can entirely replace the noun.

Russian

In Russian, the conversion (or zero derivation) process of an adjective becoming a noun is the only type of conversion that is allowed. The process functions as a critical means of addition to the open class category of nouns. Of all Slavic languages, Russian is the one that uses the attributive nouns the most. When the adjective is nominalized, the adjectival inflection alone expresses case, number and gender, and the noun is omitted. For example, the Russian phrase «приёмная комната» (''priyomnaya komnata'', "receiving room") becomes «приёмная» (''priyomnaya'', "reception room"). The adjective "receiving" takes the nominal from "reception" and replaces the noun "room". Many adjectival nouns in Russian serve to create nouns. Those common forms of nouns are known as "deleted nouns"; and there are three types: The first type occurs in the specific context within a sentence or phrase and refers to the original noun that it describes. For example, in the sentence "Tall trees are older than short" the adjective "short" has become a noun and is assumed to mean "the short ones". Such a derivation is contextually sensitive to the lexical meaning of the phrase of which it is part. The content-specific use of adjectival nouns also occurs in the second type in which nouns can be deleted, or assumed, in colloquial expressions. For example, in Russian, one might say «встречный» "oncoming" to refer to: 1) «встречный ветер» — headwind; 2) «встречный поезд» — train coming from the opposite direction; 3) «встречный план» — counter-plan; 4) «встречный иск» — counter-claim. The third type is known as the "permanent" adjectival noun and has an adjective that stands alone as a noun. Such adjectives have become nouns over time, and most speakers are aware of their implicit adjectival meaning. For example, «прилагательное» (lit. "something, that apply something else") — the adjective.

Arabic

Nominalized adjectives occur frequently in both

Classical Arabic Classical Arabic or Quranic Arabic () is the standardized literary form of Arabic used from the 7th century and throughout the Middle Ages, most notably in Umayyad Caliphate, Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphate, Abbasid literary texts such as poetry, e ...

and

Modern Standard Arabic Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) or Modern Written Arabic (MWA) is the variety of Standard language, standardized, Literary language, literary Arabic that developed in the Arab world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and in some usages al ...

. An example would be "things (that are) Islamic", which is derived from the adjective "Islamic" in the inanimate plural inflection. Another example would be "the big one" (said of a person or thing of masculine gender), from "big" inflected in the masculine singular.

References

{{lexical categories, state=collapsed Nouns by type Adjectives by type