Safire on participles and gerunds

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:48 AM -0500 12/24/07, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>Thanks, Arnold.  I am fortunately constrained in submitting to the
>OED to decide only between verb, adjective, and noun.
>
>I do have one quibble, though.  What about the adjectival use, in
>"The stuffing ingredients are bread crumbs [etc.]"?  Or should I wait
>'til next November to raise this issue?
>
>Joel

Not really an adjectival use, I'd say.  "Stuffing ingredients" is
like "brick wall", a nominal compound, and "stuffing" here is just a
noun, albeit one that modifies the noun to its right.  It fails the
adjectival diagnostics:  *those ingredients seem stuffing, etc.

LH

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org