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Is there a specific grammatical term for a qualifying adjective which takes the noun phrase fully outside the usual domain of the noun which it qualifies? For example:

  • fake money;
  • skew field (math.);
  • simulated crash?
Dan
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  • It's certainly not a different part of speech: syntactically there is nothing special about these. I'm not aware of a particular term that captures their semantics - indeed, I'm not certain that the distinction you are making is necessarily a sharp one. – Colin Fine Dec 23 '20 at 19:57
  • All adjectives are partitive. That is their function: The black dog; the hot topic. "Fake" is no different, grammatically, from "hot money" or "foreign money. – Greybeard Dec 23 '20 at 20:05
  • How is this any different from transferred epithet? – user405662 Dec 23 '20 at 20:43
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    From the duplicate: they're anti-intersective [Adj] +[N] (or [Natt] + [N]) pairs. An example is 'a fake Picasso': a fake Picasso is not a Picasso (though a forged painting is still a painting). The jury is out with 'toy gun' as gun's definition has now been broadened to include the toy replicas. – Edwin Ashworth Dec 23 '20 at 20:57
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    With examples like 'alleged criminal' where the referent may or may not be a criminal, the term non-intersective applies. – Edwin Ashworth Dec 23 '20 at 21:05
  • I've acknowledged in the UI that this is a dupe and that the answer is non-intersective. Sorry for not finding this before asking. – Dan Dec 23 '20 at 23:04
  • (If anyone wonders why anyone would care, I'm trying to solve a question about the grammar of another language, and need to know what terminology to search for). – Dan Dec 23 '20 at 23:26
  • You need to say more clearly what this phenomenon is that you are trying to identify. If you are a surrealist, any adjective may qualify any noun. There is a place for 'squelchy clouds', 'wobbly trees and 'high pitched silence'. Even without surrealism, it is often possible to find a context in which an unusual pairing makes sense. You might call a rock pool a 'liquid hotel for crustaceans'. Can you provide some whole sentences as examples of what you are looking for? – Tuffy Dec 23 '20 at 23:46

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