[log in to unmask]" type="cite">Peter,
I think the "understood head noun" gives us a nice, neat analysis, and it also seems to mirror the way we understand these things. I generally present it as a kind of ellipsis. "The car parked in front of my house is Herb's [car]." The context, in this case the earlier part of the sentence, makes repetition of "car" unnecessary. We do this also with auxiliary verbs standing in for whole predicates. "I won't be staying for dinner, but Mark will [be staying for dinner]." If we don't use the concept of "understood element", then we have to invent strange new categories.
Traditional school grammars often classify everything that "modifies" a noun as an adjective, but I don't think that is useful. "Herb's" is a possessive noun acting as determiner. We do have pronouns that make it more complicated. (That car is his. That car is mine. That car is ours.) Mine and ours are interesting, since they can't be used as determiners. (*This is ours car. *This is mine car.)
We can also reverse it. ("Herb's is the car parked in front of my house." "Mine is the red one.")
Despite these minor complications, I think "understood head noun" is neat and clean and accurate.
Craig
Peter Adams wrote:[log in to unmask]" type="cite">I'm wondering about the word class of possessive nouns when they appear in the subject complement position:
The car parked in front of my house is Herb's.
Is "Herb's" still a determiner with, perhaps, an understood head noun "car"? Or is it an adjective?
Peter Adams
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