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Suppose I were to say this sentence: "I own a 2003 Ford F-150."

  1. Would 2003 Ford F-150 be a compound proper noun?

  2. Would Ford F-150 be a compound proper noun and 2003 be an adjective?

  3. Would F-150 be a proper noun and 2003 and Ford be adjectives?

  4. Am I way off, and there is some other term for this?

It's been a while since I've taken any sort of grammar course, so I'm admittedly rusty on some specific instances like this. I honestly don't think #3 is the correct answer, as Ford seems like it would definitely be part of the proper noun, but I included it just to be thorough.

David Stinemetze
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  • When you have noun chains like those, each one but the last is an attributive noun, also called a noun adjunct. – tchrist Jul 22 '14 at 04:28
  • @tchrist Looking at your profile, I see you are a programmer so I can probably explain further what prompted this question. I'm interested in this question because I'm trying to use it as an example to explain Object-Oriented Programming to someone. Typically for introductory examples, you use the noun = Object, adjective = Property, verb = Functions for illustration. I know it's not a perfect analogy but If I have 2003FordF150 extends FordF150, which extended Ford, which extended Vehicle would that make sense? Since properties could vary in different years of a vehicle. – David Stinemetze Jul 22 '14 at 04:33
  • You could consider asking on the Linguistics question site too. – curiousdannii Jul 22 '14 at 05:28
  • @curiousdannii Thanks. I honestly never know where to post half of the questions I have on Stack Exchange. There seems to be a lot of redundancy. – David Stinemetze Jul 22 '14 at 05:28
  • @DavidStinemetze there is some redundancy, and that's not always a bad thing. Some questions have one home, some more than one, and some none. This question is fine here, but you might get different answers at the linguistics site. If you're satisfied with what you get here, don't bother asking there! – curiousdannii Jul 22 '14 at 05:30
  • @curiousdannii I might do that in a bit. I'm gonna let the discussion continue here for a little bit and see how it resolves. I mean, for my purposes, I've got a sufficient of enough answer. At this point, I'm just curious what else others have to say about it. – David Stinemetze Jul 22 '14 at 05:36
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    All proper names are fixed phrases. Capitalization rules vary, but as long as they can be the subject or the object of a grammatical clause, fixed proper names are *Noun Phrases*. – John Lawler Jul 28 '14 at 17:08
  • @JohnLawler So are you saying that the year would also be included in the Noun Phrase? – David Stinemetze Jul 29 '14 at 00:55
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    I'm saying you could include it in the proper noun phrase, or not, as you please; proper noun phrases are extremely individual and not subject to grammar rules. Or at least not to ordinary ones; they follow their own rules. – John Lawler Jul 29 '14 at 01:03
  • @JohnLawler Is there any where that this is documented as being the case? And if so would you post it as an answer? – David Stinemetze Jul 31 '14 at 16:23
  • Individual proper noun phrases are not "documented as being the case". Billions of them are spoken every day. As I said, rules vary for proper noun phrases, especially for written sentences. You pays your money and you takes your choice, just like everybody else. – John Lawler Jul 31 '14 at 16:27
  • @JohnLawler Well what I meant as "documented as being the case", was not referring to this specific instance. What I mean is, is there some explicitly written rule that says something to the effect of "for proper noun phrases, all bets are off"? – David Stinemetze Jul 31 '14 at 16:33
  • Well, we both just wrote it here. That's explicitly written, and that's exactly what it says. What more do you want? – John Lawler Jul 31 '14 at 16:35
  • @JohnLawler My point is that I'm getting a lot of contradictory opinions in here, and I think having a reference to some sort of authoritative source would be ideal. – David Stinemetze Jul 31 '14 at 20:19
  • Well, pick your authority, then. What standards do you judge authorities by? Who has the right to tell you how you should talk and write? Be very very careful picking authorities. – John Lawler Jul 31 '14 at 21:21
  • If you were doing per-token part-of-speech assignments, 2003 would be classified as a *numeral, which is either its own word-class or a subclass of determiner*. Like other determiners, they mandatorily precede all adjectives in the noun phrase. These are denoted by CD using Penn Treebank tags and by crd using NUPOS tags. (cont...) – tchrist Aug 03 '14 at 21:04
  • (in continuation) However, here it’s part of a proper name, which all follow their own rules. Another example of a fixed numeral embedded in a proper name occurs at the end of Queen Elizabeth II, where this time the numeral a Roman one not an Arabic one the way 2003 is. But you really have to think of these as inseparable entities w/1 POS tag. It’s not like 2003 or Ford — or Queen or II — are functioning as adjectives in support of some central noun in the noun phrase. The entire thing is a multiword noun, similar to how West is no adjective in Morgantown, West Virginia. – tchrist Aug 03 '14 at 21:10

3 Answers3

8

Ford F-150 is the official full name of the car (make + model). Grammatically speaking, it is a compound proper noun:

I own a Ford F-150.

F-150 is an abbreviated version of that name:

I own an F-150.

So is Ford in the following statement (although the designation could refer to any Ford motor car, not just an F-150):

I own a Ford.

In your example sentence

"I own a 2003 Ford F-150",

2003 is an adjective; it is not a necessary element for specifying the type of car, but describes one of its attributes (namely its age).

Erik Kowal
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  • Quick follow up question. There could be vast differences between 2003 and a 2014 making them two entirely different vehicles. Ordering parts for one versus the other can illustrate that. Isn't the year key in identifying the product? To me it seems like 2003 says a lot more about the vehicle than "red" would. I guess I could be splitting hairs here, but I just figured I'd bring it up. – David Stinemetze Jul 22 '14 at 04:24
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    No, 2003 is a *cardinal number, which is something like a special subtype of noun — kinda. It is certainly not an adjective. Ordinal numbers* are more likely to be adjectives. – tchrist Jul 22 '14 at 04:33
  • @DavidStinemetze - Let's assume for the sake of illustrating my point that the 2003 and 2014 models are vastly different from each other, but that model years 2003-2007 are all identical. The essence of the issue you have identified would then be that Ford has continued to use the same name for two completely different vehicles. So in my view, the model year remains an adjective (or determiner, to use the classification applied by many linguists) to describe the car's age, but the meaning of the compound noun Ford F-150 is not the same when comparing a 2003 model to a 2014 model. – Erik Kowal Jul 22 '14 at 04:39
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    @tchrist - You're muddling up the different categories and uses of numbers. 2003 is a cardinal number if you're counting objects: There are 2003 people in this theatre. It's an ordinal number if you're specifying the position in a sequence: That's the 2003rd time you've told me that. When you're using it to describe the age of something, it's an adjective or determiner. – Erik Kowal Jul 22 '14 at 04:50
  • @tchrist Based on the definition of an ordinal number, it seems like that would be more accurate than cardinal number. 2003 would almost seem to indicate some sort of "version number". So instead of "first, second, third", it's just "two-thousand-third", or "two-thousand-fourteenth". Based on that it seems the classifying it as a "determiner" or at least as a special case should be good enough for my purposes. – David Stinemetze Jul 22 '14 at 05:27
  • Note that adjectives can be vital to determining the meaning of a sentence. Just because 2003 is an adjective (as I believe it is) does not mean it can be dismissed as unnecessary detail. There goes my old lady has a very different meaning without the adjective old in it. Adjectives can be key in identifying what exactly is being discussed. – Jerenda Jul 22 '14 at 05:28
  • I don't think it's accurate to call '2003' an adjective. It's function is a modifier, just like the function of adjectives, but that doesn't mean it is an adjective. – curiousdannii Jul 22 '14 at 05:32
  • @curiousdannii - So what part of speech would you describe it as being? – Erik Kowal Jul 22 '14 at 06:43
  • @ErikKowal a numeral, possibly a noun. – curiousdannii Jul 22 '14 at 07:18
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    It seems like it serves the same function as a color name, e.g. red Ford F-150. – Barmar Jul 29 '14 at 07:01
  • @ErikKowal It can't really be a determiner because normal adjectives like red don't precede determiners: red 2003 Fords works, red the Fords doesn't*. Doesn't look like an adjective, can't grade it, for example (though could be other reasons for that). Seems like a noun modifying a (proper) noun phrase to me. – Araucaria - Him Jul 29 '14 at 20:17
  • @ErikKowal At this point I'm not exactly sure if I can accept this as the correct answer because there seems to still be some sort of dispute about it amongst people much more knowledgeable than I. If you can either provide some sort of documented source to backup your answer, or modify the answer to include the dispute I can mark this answer correct. – David Stinemetze Jul 31 '14 at 16:30
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"2003 Ford F-150" is a string of adjectives describing a truck. Trademarks are always adjectives, describing a noun by specifying its manufacturer or originator.

As the International Trademark Association puts it:

Trademarks and service marks are proper adjectives. Not nouns. Not verbs. A mark should always be used as an adjective qualifying a generic noun that defines the product or service. A mark is a company brand name, not a product or service itself. -- A Guide to Proper Trademark Use

It's much clearer if you say "2003 Ford F-150 truck" that "truck" is the noun and the other words describe what kind of truck it is. But it's perfectly grammatical to omit the noun when it's clear from context what the noun is.

David Schwartz
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-1

Ordinarily, if you're unsure about the part of speech for a portion of a sentence, a good place to start would be to try replacing the portion in question with a section whose POS is known a priori. In this case, both 2003 and Ford seem to be acting like adjectives--as people have mentioned, it feels fine to replace either word with red e.g. red Ford F-150, 2003 red F-150--so the short answer is that in this case both 2003 and Ford are adjectives.

So, it turns out that all F-150s are Ford F-150s, so it feels like Ford is modifying the sentence in a different way than 2003 is, but I would argue that this is a problem of pragmatics, not syntax.

I would give a syntax tree of this sentence, using a simplified grammar, as

I own a 2003 Ford F-150

Sentence:
   Noun Phrase:
      Pronoun:
         "I"
   Verb Phrase:
      Transitive Verb:
         "own"
      Noun Phrase:
         Determiner:
            "a"
         Noun:
            Adjective:
               "2003"
            Noun:
               Adjective:
                  "Ford"
               Noun:
                  "F-150"

This analysis is backed up by Wikipedia in their article on english compounds

colinro
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  • But couldn't you also say "I drive a Ford" if there's context in the conversation where that would make sense? Or if there's enough context, "I drive a 2003". That's not an adjective in these cases. – David Stinemetze Jul 31 '14 at 20:22
  • Absolutely. In English, nouns can act like adjectives "for free", without any morphological markings. Ford is usually a noun, but when it's used like this it's also an adjective. just like you can have an "office job" (a job in an office), or a "paper tray" (a tray for holding paper), you can have a "Ford truck" (a truck made by Ford) – colinro Jul 31 '14 at 20:33
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    @colinro Not really, when a noun modifies a noun it's still a noun, it doesn't become an adjective! You're right when you say that nouns can act like adjectives to the extent that they can have the same function, but they don't become a different part of speech. You can't for example say yours is an officer job than mine! – Araucaria - Him Aug 01 '14 at 18:47
  • @Aruacaria I'm not sure I agree with you; you also can't say yours is a red job than mine, but nobody would take that as evidence that red isn't an adjective – colinro Aug 03 '14 at 20:24
  • I’m sorry, but that parse is pure nonsense. In a “2003 Ford F-150”, the 2003 and Ford elements are no more adjectives than Francis and Scott are in “Francis Scott Key”. In both cases, the entire multiword component is a proper noun. – tchrist Aug 03 '14 at 20:46
  • The process by which an adjective is made from a noun with the same form is called conversion or null-derivation, and it is very common in English. – colinro Aug 03 '14 at 20:47
  • @tchrist absolutely not. The essential defining syntactic characteristic of a proper noun is that it doesn't take a determiner in forming a noun phrase. 2003 Ford F-150 is clearly a bare noun, the only question is about that noun's internal structure – colinro Aug 03 '14 at 20:50
  • The Netherlands, the United States, and the United Kingdom are all going to be delighted to hear that they have been demoted from being a proper noun due to their determiners, as no doubt shall the New York Yankees and The Odyssey. – tchrist Aug 03 '14 at 21:19
  • @tchrist ...fair. Proper nouns never take "a" -- it doesn't even make sense to talk about an indefinite proper noun – colinro Aug 03 '14 at 21:23
  • Nouns are not “converted” into adjectives when used attributively. If you’ve lost your pen cap while you were climbing the orange tree to fetch your fighter kite that got stuck there, then pen, orange, and fighter do not “convert” to adjectives; they remain nouns. However, if you did so by the light an orange sunset, then that second instance of orange would indeed be an adjective. You can tell the difference because of the stress in orange tree being different from that in orange sunset. – tchrist Aug 03 '14 at 21:29
  • Let us continue this discussion in chat. – colinro Aug 03 '14 at 21:58