"the most clutch" (adjectival phrase)

[Laurence Horn]

A noun that's part of a nominal (noun-noun) compound.  In other words, more like "wood" in "wood shop" than like "wooden" in "wooden smile".  Besides the comparative/superlative and the "How … is X?" diagnostics, and of course possibility of adverbial modifiers like "very", although (like "how") this depends also on gradability, there's also the question of whether it appears after predicates like "remain", "look" or "seem", which distinguishes adjectival modifiers ("Her smile remained wooden") from noun modifiers ("The house looks wood/brick").  The latter seems bad to me because I don't have "wood" or "brick" as an adjective, but YMMV.  So when we began to be able to attest

That party was funner than last year's.
How fun is that?
That looks really fun.

we could tell that "fun" had become reanalyzable as an adjective, while _fun_ in "a fun party" could still be a noun rather than (or as well as) an adjective.

No doubt, this has been discussed on Language Log.  Arnold?  Ben?

LH

On Dec 19, 2011, at 2:21 PM, Dan Goncharoff wrote:

> What was it before it was "reanalyzed" as an adjective? I only know it as
> an adjective: clutch player, clutch play.
>
> DanG
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 2:06 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>> Subject:      Re: "the most clutch" (adjectival phrase)
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> On Dec 19, 2011, at 1:33 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>>
>>> At 12/19/2011 11:05 AM, Ronald Butters wrote:
>>>> Is the point that this should have been "clutchest" instead?
>>>
>>> No.
>>> Joel
>>>
>>
>> It's that it's been reanalyzed as an adjective, as the superlative
>> indicates. "How clutch is he?" would do the same.
>>
>> LH
>>>
>>>> On Dec 19, 2011, at 11:02 AM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Tom Brady yesterday:  "the most clutch quarterback of his era
>>>>> reminded everyone why he's still The One."
>>>>>
>>>>> Michael Silver's Morning Rush, Yahoo Sports Exclusive.
>>>>>
>>>>
>> http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slug=ms-silver_morning_rush_tom_brady_tim_tebow_121911
>>>>>
>>>>> Joel
>>>>>
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