A common construction in some foreign languages, but seemly not in English, is to use a noun where we would use an adjective. The two forms are:
A: PRONOUN "BE" ADJECTIVE
B: PRONOUN "HAVE" ∅-DETERMINER ATTRIBUTIVE-NOUN
I have used "PRONOUN" for simplicity, although it could equally be a noun phrase. Note that even in French where determiners before nouns are usually mandatory, there is no determiner in the (B) grammar:
- English (A): He is hungry
Dutch (B): Hij heeft honger
French (B): Il a faim- English (A): He is thirsty
Dutch (B): Hij heeft dorst
French (B): Il a soif- English (A): He is intelligent
Dutch (A): Hij is intelligent
French (A): Il est intelligent- English (A): He is strong
Dutch (A): Hij is sterk
French (A): Il est fort- English (A): He is ugly
Dutch (A): Hij is lelijk
French (A): Il est laid
If one foreign language uses the (B) form instead of the (A) form, it seems likely that the others will too. This seems to indicate that it's something about the meanings of the words, not the grammar. Although it's not idiomatic, we could say each of these in the (B) form in English:
- He has hunger
- He has thirst
- He has intelligence
- He has strength
- He has ugliness
Trying to make these partitive changes their meaning. "He has some X[ATTRIBUTIVE-NOUN]" means roughly "He is somewhat X[ADJECTIVE]". I'm not sure if English has any idiomatic (B) constructions.
The only difference I can see is that the (B) form denotes a short-term state, whereas the (A) form denotes a long-term state. I seem to remember something about Spanish having two nouns for "to be" that roughly correspond to short and long-term attributes.
Compare with the partitive construction:
C: PRONOUN "HAVE" (DETERMINER) NON-ATTRIBUTIVE-NOUN
- English (C): He has (some) milk
Dutch (C): Hij heeft (wat) melk
French (C): Il a du lait
Both Dutch and French have all the constructions (A), (B), and (C), whereas English only has the (A) and (C) constructions idiomatically (as far as I know), with (B) being understandable but (mostly?) unidiomatic.
What is it about these nouns that causes them to be used instead of adjectives? Why don't they take determiners in the (B) construction?
