1) Is a pasta topped with actual calamari and prawns not a "calamari and prawns pasta" ? 2) Prawn is a noun and the plural is prawns right? 3) Whats the reason behind the "prawn cocktail" use? 4) Can I say that a plate contains five prawns? Thx
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A prawn cocktail is a compound noun composed of a noun used attributively plus another noun. Attributive nouns are seldom (but not quite never) plural in English. – tchrist Jun 11 '17 at 02:08
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@tchrist Thats great and very clear now. You wrote "Attributive nouns are seldom (but not quite never) plural in English" so can you think of one in plural? – A.D. Jun 11 '17 at 12:04
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In cattle guard, people pusher, arms race, doubles match, economics course we see nouns used attributively which are morphologically plural. – tchrist Jun 11 '17 at 15:01
1 Answers
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It's a noun vs. adjective thing -- PRAWN in "pasta topped with prawns" is a noun; PRAWN in "prawn cocktail" is an adjective.
Thus:
One prawn, Two prawns
...but
One prawn cocktail, Two prawn cocktails.
Robin Hamilton
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Thx Robin, so if I said "calamari and prawn pasta" I would imply that the pasta is made out of calamari and prawns which is not the case as the pasta is made of wheat hence I should say "calamari and prawns pasta" to indicate a pasta dish that contains among others also calamari and prawns is that right? – A.D. Jun 11 '17 at 01:39
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1"calamari and prawn pasta" is OK, as "calamari and prawn" functions as an adjectival phrase. But you could also say, "pasta with calamari and prawns," where "prawns" (as a noun) would be in the plural. But not "calamari and prawns pasta." As long as you keep the adjective OR adjectival phrase / noun distinction clear, it should fall into place. – Robin Hamilton Jun 11 '17 at 01:58
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No, that's not right at all. Prawn is only ever a noun, never an adjective. If it were an adjective, then one cocktail could be “prawner” than another. Attributive nouns are not adjectives: they are still nouns. And calalari and prawn is simply two nouns joined by a coördinating conjunction with the whole thing used attributively on cocktail. There are no adjectives here. If you want an adjective, you'd need prawns that were local or imported so could have a local prawn cocktail versus an imported prawn cocktail, being a cocktail of local or imported prawns. – tchrist Jun 11 '17 at 02:03
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While the OED only lists "prawn" as a noun or a verb, in the phrase "prawn cocktail", it functions as an adjective, descriptively qualifying a noun. In my book, that makes it an adjective. The linguistic underpinnings of the OED in this area are ... very nineteenth century. See Geoffrey Pullum partly on this point -- http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/PaynHuddPull.pdf But I'd agree, this turns on whether we consider "prawn", in this instance, to be an adjective or an attributive noun. And I'm probably well in the minority here. Off to consult Halliday's Functional Grammar now. – Robin Hamilton Jun 11 '17 at 02:28
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Not all noun modifiers are adjectives! This is well accepted. It cannot be an adjective: it fails all the adjective tests. Predicate test: A good cocktail is a cocktail which is good, but a prawn cocktail is not a a cocktail which is prawn. Comparative test: There are tasty cocktails and tastier cocktails, but there are no prawner cocktails. Intensifier test: You can have a very tasty cocktail but you cannot have a very prawn cocktail. Modifier test: The prawn in prawn cocktail can only be modified by adjectives never by adverbs. – tchrist Jun 11 '17 at 02:37
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... or to put it more simply, you're almost certainly right here, and I'm almost certainly wrong. :-) Part of this is that most of my time is spent with Cant, and there's much more category-switching there than there is in Standard English. So I'm wary of the OED noun/adjective/verb conceptual structure applied outside the confines of a Standard English Dictionary. They do these things differently in Alsatia-in-London-as-was. – Robin Hamilton Jun 11 '17 at 02:42
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Re "Not all noun [etc] ..." I think that's close to where my problem lies (and where I'm wrong in applying this to SE). If "prawn" were a Cant term, it would have no problem morphing into an adjective, whereas in SE, it would have to become "prawnish" before it was allowed to pass muster as an adjective. I'm thinking at the moment of the term "Bowman" in this context. Or the word "slang", which begins as a Cant term in the 1730s, developing a whole range of senses, before it enters SE (post-1770) as a term only associated with language. Or maybe, which is probable, I'm just confused. – Robin Hamilton Jun 11 '17 at 03:01
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Now i m also confused. If Prawn is a noun with a singular and a plural just like lentils or peas why can i not say "sardines and prawns pasta"? if I can say "lentils and peas pasta"? or can't I? – A.D. Jun 11 '17 at 04:55
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@A.D. think of a shop selling shoes, we don't call it a "Shoes shop" but a "Shoe shop" which a learner might say it sounds like a shop that sells a single footwear. The "shoe" modifies the noun that follows. Another example, in the UK there are people who love a chip butty which is basically a sandwich made with chips. No -s is needed on "chip" as we understand what type of sandwich it is. The "chip" provides more information. – Mari-Lou A Jun 11 '17 at 05:42
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