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While browsing EL&U I sometimes see people pointing out in their answer that some words have been used in an unusual way (or should I call it structure?), producing sentences like "the writer is using singular they / historical present / exclusive or / concessive may".

Sometimes, instead of being the word that's being used in a specific way, the noun in this adj+noun couple is just the name of the structure - like "Saxon genitive" (instead of being a "Saxon S") or "attributive noun", "open compound", etc.

Often, these adj+noun couples are very fancy and highly technical, like in the examples above.

Is there an umbrella term that encompasses all these adj+noun combinations that seem so common in linguistic discourse?

I sometimes need to ask people about what describes a part of discourse, so knowing what they are called would be useful.

Please note that I am not talking about the names of verbal tenses, but it's entirely possible they fall under the same umbrella.

Zachiel
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    Such terms exist in pretty much every field; I don't think there's a specific name for them, other than "linguistics terminology" or "grammatical terms." – alphabet Jun 01 '23 at 23:45
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    (Some people here are Real Actual Linguists and they have the best words. The rest of us are just pretending.) – alphabet Jun 01 '23 at 23:48
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    It's not just grammar or linguistics; go to a good hardware store and point to anything. You'll see that it has a name like that, sometimes much more fanciful than you'd expect. It's just the necessity of naming; the more things there are, the more ways there are to talk about them, and the longer their full names get. – John Lawler Jun 02 '23 at 02:12
  • What is this "umbrella term" that you used ? Seems to be "adj+noun" itself ! Unless you can remember the term you want to know about , "grammatical term" is guess-work & likely to be wrong. It is analogous to [[ I have a Question , I am not sure what the Question is & what it is about , but it goes some thing like "What is {something about some object I forgot at the moment} ?" , Can you answer it ? ]] – Prem Jun 02 '23 at 05:59
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    Are you wanting a term specific to linguistics, or a general term for all two-word expressions? And excluding three-word expressions like "past perfect tense" or "Great Vowel Shift"? – Stuart F Jun 02 '23 at 08:27
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    It's a start to realise that [adjective] + [noun] strings exhibit cohesiveness along a continuum which can be approximated: free combination (eg 'small fish') ... weak collocation ( 'lowish income') ... strong collocation ('casual acquaintance') ... open compound ('mobile phone'). See compounds and phrases: compound nouns vs free combinations vs collocations. The semantic relation between the adjective and the noun can be of more than a few types. – Edwin Ashworth Jun 02 '23 at 11:57
  • @StuartF I'm talking about linguistic terms. My initial aim for this question was knowing what to put in the title of this other question where in the end I used (at least as of now) "grammatical term", which I'm positive is not the technical word for the specific concept I want to express. – Zachiel Jun 02 '23 at 16:13
  • exceptions, inside talk, technical terms… I wouldn't know, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last millennium. – HippoSawrUs Jun 02 '23 at 16:51
  • @HippoSawrUs If the most specific we can get is technical term, so be it (exceptions doesn't fit, inside talk focuses on the wrong aspect) – Zachiel Jun 02 '23 at 17:22
  • Hi Zachiel, I edited your post, but am not entirely sure I got your intention across when it comes to the main question: you wrote "these kind of adj+noun names" originally, but I think you're searching for a word that could classify all of these adj+noun combinations, right? – Joachim Jun 02 '23 at 17:38
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    The terms you ask about do not collocate. They seem to be all over the board. That's the problem. – Lambie Jun 02 '23 at 18:08
  • @Barmar And if you don't like the existing terms you can just invent new ones. – alphabet Jun 02 '23 at 23:37
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    Trivially, they're all [subsets/a subset of] noun phrases. But open compounds deriving from [adjective] + [noun] strings, being single lexemes, are very different from free combination [adjective] + [noun] strings. – Edwin Ashworth Jun 03 '23 at 10:58
  • Are those not simply compound nouns? – Robbie Goodwin Sep 13 '23 at 11:35
  • @RobbieGoodwin they surely are compound nouns but I hoped there to be a category of those used specifically to describe grammatical constructs such as "compound noun" (For instance in this comment I called that "grammatical constructs" but I'm not sure it's the right compound noun for that concept.) – Zachiel Sep 17 '23 at 11:51
  • Can you clarify that? It reads as though you're seeking a category of compound nouns used specifically to describe constructs such as 'compound noun'? Was that what you meant? – Robbie Goodwin Sep 17 '23 at 16:51
  • @RobbieGoodwin I think yes but I also think that Lambie is right. I need to pay attention to when I see those things I'm thinking of named and make real examples with precisely those things. I just know it's the sort of things that are used to mark some specific way to use some words... but not some other specific ways, and it's hard to pinpoint without knowing the terminology beforehand. – Zachiel Sep 17 '23 at 22:18
  • Then can you re-phrase preferably the whole of '…instead of being the word that's being used in a specific way, the noun in this adj+noun couple is just the name of the structure' or at least, re-phrase 'the noun in this adj+noun couple is just the name of the structure' – Robbie Goodwin Sep 18 '23 at 21:34
  • @Lambie I think i got it now: it's names that express some part of speech accompanied by adjectives that justify the particular position in the sentence where they are in. I find such structures mostly in questions on this site that ask why a certain sentence is grammatically because the asker expects a certain word not to be in a certain position and someone replies "no, it's fine, it's a special case, that is a ___ ____, it works like this". – Zachiel Dec 26 '23 at 23:06
  • @RobbieGoodwin see my comment for Lambie, maybe it's a start for better phrasing my question. – Zachiel Dec 26 '23 at 23:07
  • Thanks, Zachiel. Can you say whether for you the general idea matters more, or your own interpretation or something else? – Robbie Goodwin Dec 26 '23 at 23:33
  • @RobbieGoodwin I'm sorry, what would be the general idea? – Zachiel Dec 27 '23 at 17:56
  • The general idea would be first, that the Question title 'What are these kinds of classifications called?' doesn't work in English.

    If you doubt that please, justify it!

    Either way, there is still no umbrella term that encompasses all your 'adj+noun combinations…'

     – Robbie Goodwin Dec 28 '23 at 16:50
  • By the way, Zachiel, how can you be sure this Question belongs here in English Language & Usage, rather than in English Language Learners? – Robbie Goodwin Jan 18 '24 at 23:13
  • @RobbieGoodwin The only reasons it's here and not there is that I think my English isn't at the "first time learning a new language" level and that I'm asking about _____ (structures? compositions? this is the word I'm looking for, after all) that I see used in answers in this branch of SE, whether EL&U appears to explain things in a more down-to-earth language, without naming the _____s - but that's just a hunch I have. (Please note that in this comment I'm using _____ as a placeholder for the umbrella word I'm looking for, in the previous one I used ____ ______ to signify an instance of it. – Zachiel Feb 04 '24 at 10:42
  • I'm sorry to point out that your suggestion that your 'English isn't at the "first time learning a new language" level' clearly demonstrates that it is very much closer to that level than you imagine. – Robbie Goodwin Feb 07 '24 at 00:35
  • @RobbieGoodwin Well, I'm not a native speaker and my English might not be the most idiomatic it could, and I don't pretend I'm that good at it, and sometimes I find myself having to resort to long-winded structures to express what I need to convey, yet I hope my english improved since my Oxford for English Learners grade 8 certification back in 9th grade... is my level still not enough to be here with the grown boys? More seriously, I think I'll go to ELL and ask about what wasn't idiomatic in how I expressed myself, I hope you will chime in because I'm genuinely interested. – Zachiel Feb 09 '24 at 19:47

2 Answers2

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This is generally referred to in cognitive science as categorization, and the adj+noun version specifically as subordinate categorization. A subordinate category is a subset of a category. For instance, phillips-head screwdriver is a subordinate of the category screwdriver. A specific screwdriver is an instance of a phillips-head screwdriver.

There are many open research problems in this area. In your case, you're applying something normally applied to the study of language to the results of the study of language, but the problems are quite general to language and concept development.

iResearchNet

jimm101
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  • When I see someone pointing out that a certain sequence of words is being used in a special way that has a name, I don't think they are pointing out the "characterization" of that sequence of words, or are they? If I had the sequence of words and I wanted to know the name of the special way they're being used, would I ask for their "characterization"? It wouldn't feel natural to me, but maybe it's the right way to say it. Does my description in this comment fit your definition? – Zachiel Jun 05 '23 at 21:17
  • Categorization, not characterization. The issue at hand is that objects, concepts, ideas and more are assigned into hierarchical categories. There is a good summary article on wikipedia: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cognitive_Science:_An_Introduction/Categorization#:~:text=The%20concept%20of%20categorization%20is,and%20perception%20of%20their%20environment. – jimm101 Jun 05 '23 at 21:45
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It is a type of binning. When you have a category and you divide it up into subcategories (bins) and then give the bins labels. Thus historical in historical present has been appropriated as a bin label. It doesn't have to be an adjective, it can be anything that is recognizable as a label first, and whose aptness as a modifier and consistency with it's normal meaning is incidental. The whiz in whiz deletion is just a complete invention (wh-word + is).

Phil Sweet
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  • Really, Phil? When did 'binning' enter the language? – Robbie Goodwin Feb 07 '24 at 00:33
  • @RobbieGoodwin Common enough by 2018 to use on GUIs. 'The radio buttons labeled Binning Factor can be selected individually to enable a method of signal-to-noise ratio improvement commonly used with scientific CCD cameras, in which the signal-generated charge from groups of neighboring pixels is combined during readout into larger "superpixels". ' https://www.microscopyu.com/tutorials/ccd-signal-to-noise-ratio "bucketing" is the same thing. They are used interchangeably. – Phil Sweet Feb 07 '24 at 21:03
  • Really, Phil? D'you not think if a word entered the language as late as 2018, it behooved you to point that out in the first place? – Robbie Goodwin Feb 07 '24 at 23:17
  • @RobbieGoodwin It entered the language ages ago, but it is becoming more well known outside of math algorithm theory and design. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/266792 – Phil Sweet Feb 08 '24 at 19:18
  • Could you be more clear, please?

    I still think if a word entered the language as late as 2018, it behooved you to point that out in the first place.

    Now I also suggest, if it entered the language 'ages ago' it certainly behooves you to say at least roughly when, or to acknowledge you're queering the pitch.

    I guess that here, 'ages ago' can't mean either 1,000 or 10 so what? Are you suggesting 'binning' entered the language about 100 years ago?

     – Robbie Goodwin Feb 08 '24 at 20:47