08 October 2007

ARGHjectives

under the category of "you gotta be kidding me i hope this was an innocent brain fart," today courtesy of Deadspin:

It was only a matter of time, really, until the adjective "to Vick" became an acceptable taunt between rival college football fans.
a commenter gets it pretty right:
"to Vick" is the most adjective verb ever
c'mon guys. even if you were taught by a misguided middle school English teacher who has no idea whatsoever what the term lexical category means, much less the fact that it is related but not equivalent to the common notion of parts of speech, you should know that "to X" is not ever ever ever an adjectival form.

geek linguist note: it should, however, be duly noted that in the [±N] / [±V] system of organizing lexical categories, adjectives are [+V]. that doesn't make verbs adjectives though.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think you mean the N/V system, not A/V.

Sincerely,
One of the few 8th years left in the department :)

Ed Cormany said...

sure enough. i never really liked that system anyway