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How to differentiate Noun Phrase from Adjective

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How to differentiate Noun Phrase from Adjective

by dhonu121 » Sun May 27, 2012 8:03 pm
Consider the following two sentences:

Carbon-14 dating reveals that the megalithic monuments in Brittany are nearly 2,000 years as old as any of their supposed Mediterranean predecessors.
1as old as any of their supposed
2older than any of their supposed
3as old as their supposed
4older than any of their supposedly
5as old as their supposedly

and


Many celebrities, such as Britney Spears, Tom Cruise, and Jessica Simpson, have secretly vacationed on Turtle Island in Fiji an exclusively tropical resort known for its privacy and beauty.

Correct form:Exclusive Tropical Resort

In both the above sentences, how do you distinguish whether to use the adverb, supposedly/xclusively or to use the adjective supposed/exclusive.
It depends on whether you see the Mediterranean Predators and Tropical Resort as Noun-phrases or Mediterranean/Tropical as adjectives.

I am not able to make the above distinction.
Can anybody help me in resolving this.

Thanks.
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by ronnie1985 » Sun May 27, 2012 10:59 pm
Example: Supposed reality and supposedly real.

Here both supposed and supposedly are acting as adjective, but their meaning are miles apart. hence focus on the meaning of the word in the sentence before going into grammatical erors.

In the sentences both Mediterranean Predecessors and Tropical resort are nouns
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by dhonu121 » Sun May 27, 2012 11:23 pm
Thanks for your reply.
So, if grammatically both the usages are correct, how do you figure out which one is the intended meaning ?
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by jimmyjimmy » Mon May 28, 2012 5:17 pm
IMO B
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by avik.ch » Wed May 30, 2012 9:49 pm
dhonu121 wrote:
In both the above sentences, how do you distinguish whether to use the adverb, supposedly/xclusively or to use the adjective supposed/exclusive.
It depends on whether you see the Mediterranean Predators and Tropical Resort as Noun-phrases or Mediterranean/Tropical as adjectives.

I am not able to make the above distinction.
Can anybody help me in resolving this.

Thanks.
An adjective modifies only nouns, an adverb modifies everything except noun.

You are correct that "mediterranean" and "tropical" are itself an adjective, and hence require an adverb. But this doesn' works in this way. This is much dependent on constituency and hierarchy.

Consider this :

Yesterday a woman arrived who I knew. - Here "who I knew" is an adverb of manner for the main verb "arrived"
Yesterday a woman who I knew arrived. - here "who i knew" is an adjective for the "woman"

Whether you should consider as a noun phrase or the only adjective works much in this way - "constituency and hierarchy"

I know Jim. - here "jim" is taking the object slot - a noun slot. So anything in this slot will be considered as a noun phrase.
I know the great Jim. - "great" modifies Jim.
I know the great intelligent Jim - here "great" modifies "intelligent Jim" (noun phrase). "Intelligent" modifies "Jim"

Hope this helps !!
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by Kasia@EconomistGMAT » Thu May 31, 2012 11:35 pm
Looking at meaning helps a great deal in this case.
The expression "exclusively tropical" would mean that Tropical Resort is ONLY tropical and not of any other kind. This would be a stylistic flaw.

The same goes for the example with "the Mediterranean." The phrase "supposedly Mediterranean predecessors" has a very different meaning from "supposed Mediterranean predecessors." In this case you need to decide what the supposition concerns - the fact that the predecessors were of Mediterranean origin or the fact that they were created earlier than the megalithic monuments in Brittany.
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