the rare

[Laurence Horn]

At 6:55 AM -0800 3/2/11, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
>On Mar 1, 2011, at 12:54 PM, Victor Steinbok wrote:
>
>>  Arnold Zwicky recently posted on nouning of adjectives on his
>>blog. Here's an addition recent example that does not fall into one
>>of the previously described categories.
>>
>>  The headline is "Opinion: When to hunt the rare", which refers to
>>the question of possible benefits of hunting of endangered or
>>otherwise protected species. I suppose, one could just blame it on
>>the headline stub.
>
>this is a well-known construction in which "the Adj" serves as a
>generic plural NP, with roughly the meaning 'Adj things/people'.
>it's so productive that even large dictionaries (like the OED) list
>only a few of these Adj uses.

I've always been puzzled by the fact that this only works to yield
generic plurals--

"Give me your tired, your poor,..."
"Ye have the poor always with you"
"The rain falls on the rich and poor alike"
*The poor is not faring as well as the rich in the current economy.
*A rich does not want his daughter to marry a poor.
*The poor on the sidewalk asked me for a handout.

--while in, say, French, neither genericity nor plural is required
for the nouning of "(le/un) pauvre".  This is not a new discovery,
but as I say it's always surprised me.

LH

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