I agree with this, adding that “je mange de la viande” and “je bois du café” can also mean "I am eating meat’ and “I am drinking coffee,” respectively.
Thanks chiquitita. I had seen these types of expressions referred to as “compound nouns”. Perhaps “adjunct nouns” would be better. I’m familiar with the negative use of “de”. It is precisely the use of un, le, and de before the object(noun) that changes the meaning of a phrase as you pointed out with your examples. Thanks again. Thanks you all.
Je bois un café = I drink / am drinking a cup of coffee
Je bois le café = I drink / am drinking the cup of coffee (that has been mentioned before)
Je bois du café = I am a coffee drinker (du being de+le, definite article)
Je ne bois pas de café = I don’t drink coffee
From m-w:
adjunct:
: something that is joined or added to another thing but is not an essential part of it
grammar : a word or phrase (such as an adverb or prepositional phrase) that provides added information about the meaning of a verb in a sentence by expressing a relation of time, place, manner, etc.
compound
: to make (something, such as an error or problem) worse : to add to (something bad)
finance : to pay interest on both an amount of money and the interest it has already earned
: to form (something) by combining separate things
Based on those definitions, I’d say that in an expression such as “road rage”, “road rage” is a compound and “road” is an adjunct to “rage”, but I’d like confirmation from people who actually studied grammar in English.
There is a Wiki page on English compound. It gives a fairly detailed compendium showing a whole bunch of ways compounds can be created in English.