# Grammar ? - part of speech **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 24, 2005, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-part-of-speech/313916 "2005-07-24T12:54:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![tygerbryght](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a9a28c/32.png) [@tygerbryght](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tygerbryght)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2005, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-part-of-speech/313916/1 "2005-07-24T12:54:19Z")
Okay, I have my own opinion, but I’m interested in seeing what the experts have to say. What are mouthful and handful? Are they nouns, adjectives or adverbs? ---
**Author:** ![flodnak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/838e76/32.png) [@flodnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flodnak)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2005, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-part-of-speech/313916/2 "2005-07-24T13:01:27Z")
Um, where’s the “opinion” here? They’re nouns. ---
**Author:** ![splain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/96bed5/32.png) [@splain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/splain)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2005, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-part-of-speech/313916/3 "2005-07-24T13:02:31Z")
Uh, huh. Nouns. ---
**Author:** ![Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/96bed5/32.png) [@Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patty_O_Furniture)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2005, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-part-of-speech/313916/4 "2005-07-24T13:06:11Z")
These things be nouns. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_T](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Gary\_T](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_T)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2005, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-part-of-speech/313916/5 "2005-07-24T13:23:18Z")
The experts have compiled dictionaries. You would do well to consult one. And with no disrespect, please be aware that neither your nor anyone else’s opinion is relevant here. As Cecil said, we don’t take votes on the facts. And yes, they’re both nouns. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Jones](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/96bed5/32.png) [@Cat\_Jones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Jones)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2005, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-part-of-speech/313916/6 "2005-07-24T13:32:22Z")
How much detail, confusion do you want here **tygerbryght**? Could your confusion be that they are ‘quantifiers’ like gallon, mile etc. A mile of dirt road. A handful of dust. If you want you could say they are ‘countable nouns’ - they can have a plural or a singular form and are used with ‘many’ rather than ‘much’. Compound nouns if you want. English allows us to make word combinations out of two words, often nouns, such as ‘fire’ and ‘engine’ - taken separately each word has a meaning, out them together and a new meaning is created with the first noun qualifying the second (in other words, acting like an adjective). eg a fire-engine is very different from an engine fire. The same thing can be done with noun adjective combinations. The resultant word is a noun. If they are used often enough together they become hyphanated then amalgamated into a single word as has happened with your examples. In this phrase ‘bowl’ is a noun and ‘full’ an adjective, A bowl full of soup. In this phrase there is no adjective A forkful of spaghetti. Happy ? ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2005, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-part-of-speech/313916/7 "2005-07-24T18:25:05Z")
> [@Cat Jones](#): > > In this phrase there is no adjective > A forkful of spaghetti. > > Happy ? Well, actually “A” is adjectival in function, even though the only modifying it does is to specify indefiniteness: “a (any) forkful of spaghetti, as opposed to the (that specific) forkful of spaghetti.” The articles are a special class of adjectives. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2005, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-part-of-speech/313916/8 "2005-07-24T18:34:12Z")
It might help to note that one can also omit the substance. “I have a handful”, or “that’s a mouthful”. Since “handful” and “mouthful” are not directly modifying anything here, it should be clear that they’re not adjectives. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Jones](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/96bed5/32.png) [@Cat\_Jones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Jones)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2005, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-part-of-speech/313916/9 "2005-07-24T21:02:53Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > Well, actually “A” is adjectival in function, even though the only modifying it does is to specify indefiniteness: “a (any) forkful of spaghetti, as opposed to the (that specific) forkful of spaghetti.” The articles are a special class of adjectives. Yes but if we are labelling parts of speech it is an article (the article in fact ;)) and I didn’t want to further muddy the waters. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2005, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-part-of-speech/313916/10 "2005-07-24T21:23:09Z")
I would put “forkful” and “handful” into the category of categorical or classifier nouns. ---
**Author:** ![DarrenS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/977dab/32.png) [@DarrenS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DarrenS)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2005, 6:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-part-of-speech/313916/11 "2005-07-25T06:35:51Z")
I wonder if the confusion on the part of the OP is because lots of adjectives end in -ful - “joyful”, “gleeful”, “tearful” etc. Of course, by the same reasoning one would assume “elderly” to be an adverb 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Jones](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/96bed5/32.png) [@Cat\_Jones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Jones)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2005, 7:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-part-of-speech/313916/12 "2005-07-25T07:09:44Z")
Oh I like that - she walked elderly across the room 😛 ---
**Author:** ![tygerbryght](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a9a28c/32.png) [@tygerbryght](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tygerbryght)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2005, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-part-of-speech/313916/13 "2005-07-26T04:56:49Z")
:smack: Ah, well. 🙂 I guess I shoulda given a bunch of examples. My problem relates to the fact that they can be used as adjectives, as noted by **Cat Jones** in post #6. And to the fact that plurals of words of this type are formed differently from regular nouns, i.e., mouthsful and handsful, etc. I tend to regard them as adjectives masquerading as nouns. BTW, **Gary T** , I looked at my bookmark file, and stopped counting links for dictionaries at 10 (not counting bilingual ones, thesauri, or other similar reference works). The point of my question? English is, as it has always been, a language busily evolving. I don’t like some of the changes, but that doesn’t make them less real. And I love to play with words (as do a significant number of other Dopers). So I wanted to see if anyone else here was looking through the same lens I was. ---
**Author:** ![Ms2001](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ms2001/32/18463_2.png) [@Ms2001](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms2001)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2005, 6:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-part-of-speech/313916/14 "2005-07-26T06:03:43Z")
> [@tygerbryght](#): > > My problem relates to the fact that they can be used as adjectives, as noted by **Cat Jones** in post #6. Those aren’t adjectives. _a_: article _handful_: noun _of_: preposition _dust_: noun To use the word as an adjective, it’d be something like “a handful dust”, which is gramatically incorrect. Handful is comparable to words like bunch, heap, gallon, and amount. A heap (of garbage), a bunch (of bananas), and an amount (of cash) are all nouns. > [@](#): > > And to the fact that plurals of words of this type are formed differently from regular nouns, i.e., mouthsful and handsful, etc. They can be, but they aren’t always. Merriam-Webster lists both handfuls and handsful (I prefer the former), but doesn’t list mouthsful at all - only mouthfuls. ---
**Author:** ![sundog66](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@sundog66](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sundog66)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2005, 6:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-part-of-speech/313916/15 "2005-07-26T06:38:46Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > Well, actually “A” is adjectival in function, even though the only modifying it does is to specify indefiniteness: “a (any) forkful of spaghetti, as opposed to the (that specific) forkful of spaghetti.” The articles are a special class of adjectives. I have a nitpick here… I am not an expert on this, but I doubt that anyone has proposed, as you do, that articles are a type of adjective (at least as far as English goes). It is theoretically advantageous not to subsume the class of articles (or more generally, “determiners”) into the class of words we call “adjectives”. To understand why this is so, consider the following (highly oversimplified) rule for generating noun phrases in English: (Det) Adj\* Noun (Parentheses indicate optionality, and the star indicates optionality and indefinite repetition.) Then we specify: Det: a, the, some, my, your, … Adj: big, furry, … Noun: dog, cat, … Our rule will now license things like “a small dog”, “a big, furry dog”, “big, big, big cats”, and also rule out countless ungrammatical constructions such as “the the dog”, “furry the a cat”, etc. And importantly, this rule works because we make a distinction between “determiner” and “adjective”: in a noun phrase, a **determiner** can appear at most once at the beginning, followed by any number of **adjectives**. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Jones](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/96bed5/32.png) [@Cat\_Jones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Jones)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2005, 7:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-part-of-speech/313916/16 "2005-07-26T07:32:36Z")
I think **Mr2001** has pretty much said what I’d wanted to say in reply to your last post **Tygerbryght**. Just to add tho’ that most of the changes taking place in contemporary English fall into two categories - both resulting from a ‘desire’ to be more concise. Nouns being used as verbs. “I sent him an e-mail” simplifies to “I e-mailed him”. (As Calvin & Hobbes said “Verbing wierds language” 😉 ) Dropping the noun from common adjective/noun combinations, effectively turning the adjective into a noun. “A microwave oven” is usually now just “a microwave”. Who says “I gave him my mobile phone number.”? these days it’s just “… my mobile number.”. (US dopers replace _mobile_ with _cell_!) As for evolution, in the singular form at least, both ‘handful’ and ‘mouthful’ appear in Shakespeare. (Now, do I dare continue this ? adding an ‘s’ to the first element in compound phrases like these is usual only when the two elements have not been blended into a single word - “courts martial” & “Lords Mayor” but not “firesengine”. - To me\* there is a difference between the two plural forms mentioned which _might_ explain why ‘mouthsful’ didn’t appear in an earlier search. The instinctive image I have in my mind is that ‘_two handfuls_’ refers to two times a single handful. “She took two handfuls of crisps”. I see a single hand being filled twice, it sounds correct and natural with any number - five handfuls, ten handfuls etc. Whereas ‘_handsful_’ makes me think of “Can’t you see I’ve got my hands full ?” and I have an image of two hands being involved rather than just the one. I could imagine a phrase like “the thirsty soldiers dropped their guns and scooped up handsful of water”. That was just an idea - I’m not claiming any factual accuracy.) ---
**Author:** ![Large\_Marge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/50afbb/32.png) [@Large\_Marge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Large_Marge)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2005, 7:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-part-of-speech/313916/17 "2005-07-26T07:39:21Z")
[sidebar] I’d like to add, too, that if you can’t hold it in your hand, it isn’t a handful. I see this all the time: "A handful of passengers escaped unharmed … " Unless you’re the Jolly Green Giant, that ain’t possible. [/sidebar] ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2005, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-part-of-speech/313916/18 "2005-07-26T12:43:57Z")
> [@sundog66](#): > > I have a nitpick here… > > I am not an expert on this, but I doubt that anyone has proposed, as you do, that articles are a type of adjective (at least as far as English goes). Naw, articles can be broadly described as a special type of adjective and indeed what I was taught by an English teacher growing up. **Polycarp** is hardly the first to suggest this. Google “article” and “type of adjective” and you’ll see this is the case. ---
**Author:** ![milquetoast](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/258eb7/32.png) [@milquetoast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/milquetoast)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2005, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-part-of-speech/313916/19 "2005-07-26T14:19:22Z")
> [@Large Marge](#): > > [sidebar] I’d like to add, too, that if you can’t hold it in your hand, it isn’t a handful. > > I see this all the time: > > "A handful of passengers escaped unharmed … " > > Unless you’re the Jolly Green Giant, that ain’t possible. [/sidebar] Sorry, **Marge** , but both [Dictionary.com](http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=handful) > [@](#): > > 1. A small, undefined number or quantity: _only a handful of people on the street._ and [Merriam-Websater](http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=handful&x=21&y=17) > [@](#): > > 2 : a small quantity or number disagree with you. ---
**Author:** ![sundog66](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@sundog66](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sundog66)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2005, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-part-of-speech/313916/20 "2005-07-26T16:34:22Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > Naw, articles can be broadly described as a special type of adjective and indeed what I was taught by an English teacher growing up. **Polycarp** is hardly the first to suggest this. Google “article” and “type of adjective” and you’ll see this is the case. Okay, fair enough… When I said no one had proposed this, I should have clarified that I meant no one in a peer-reviewed linguistics paper. There are lots of wild misconceptions about grammar floating around on the Internet, and among English teachers. Didn’t my argument for the distinction make any sense? There is a confusion here between **category** and **function**. “Adjective” is a label for a category of words. I’ve tried to show why this is a useful label to have, and why it needs to exclude determiners. In contrast, the functional term encompassing what adjectives and determiners serve as when preceding a noun is “adnominal modifier”. To draw a crude analogy, a whale is not a type of fish, because “fish” is a biological category, not simply a functional label for things that swim underwater. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-part-of-speech/313916.md?page=2)