 #2 (permalink) Mon Oct 27, 2003 11:35 am Dirty tricks campaign |
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| Riccioni wrote: |
Dear Alan:
Would you please have a look at the following extract from the European Edition of "The Independent" dated Friday 10 October 2003?
The FBI confirmed its agents planted the bugs, but refused to say when they were installed, or why. Members of Mr Street's campaign claim they are part of a Republican dirty tricks campaign.
MY question is: why "...a Republican dirty <b>tricks</b> campaign" AND NOT "...a Republican dirty <b>trick</b> campaign"? In other words, why does the noun "tricks" stays/remains in the plural?
Many, many thanks for your kind help.
Regards,
Paolo
P.S. I find "The Independent" the best British newspaper. Second best "The Guardian". What do you think? I'd like to read your opinion on this. |
Hi Paolo,
I can see the reason for your question, which is an interesting one. We would say for example 'a book of jokes' and take the word 'jokes' and turn it into an adjective and create 'joke book' and we would say for example 'a collection of stamps' change 'stamps' into an adjective and create 'stamp collection'. But you'll notice that both 'joke' and 'stamp' are not qualified with an adjective. If we qualify 'jokes' with 'silly' and 'stamps' with 'Italian' we get 'silly jokes' and 'Italian stamps' and if we then drop the 's' from the two nouns 'jokes' and 'stamps' and put the two words before the two main nouns 'book' 'collection' we would get: 'A silly joke book' and 'An Italian stamp collection' You can see then it is not clear whether 'silly' refers to 'book' or 'joke' or 'Italian' refers to 'stamp' or 'collection' So back to 'dirty tricks' - here these two words are not used adjectivally but are simply part of a contraction for 'a campaign of dirty tricks'
Sorry this takes such a long time to explain but hope it makes sense.
Best wishes
Alan
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Alan
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Joined: 27 Sep 2003
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Location: UK
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