Representing actions with nouns
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Students' problems | page 6 of 7 |
Word class confusion: nouns and adjectives
Many students appear to confuse parts of speech when they are writing compositions. The following examples illustrate cases where a noun form has been chosen instead of an adjective.
Hong Kong people are also becoming more materialism. (TeleNex Students)
Hong Kong people are also becoming more materialistic.They should be arrested and charged in any claimed democracy country.
(TeleNex Students)
They should be arrested and charged in any claimed democratic country.Hong Kong will be more prosperity. (TeleNex Students)
Hong Kong will be more prosperous.
Perhaps in these cases students have learnt the noun form first, and so it is more
familiar to them. They may also be influenced by the fact that in Chinese no change is
needed for a word like man jue "democracy" to be used as a noun or an
adjective 
.
For further information about the form, see 
Representing
actions with nouns: Forms of nominalisation.
Introduction
Word class confusion: nouns and adjectives
