I would be happy to avoid posting in this thread again, but I believe I should respond to Khushrenada because
it would be rude to leave a potential conflict unresolved. I wouldn't want there to be any misunderstandings or hurt feelings lingering on my account.
One might point out that "Kingdom" is not an adjective, so the suggestion fails for grammar reasons alone.
I was wondering if someone was going to debate me on this. I was hoping for Pale or Vudu but I'm more than happy to take on Partybear. I've fought him on a few occasions so it will be enjoyable to claim another victory against him here.
You claimed you weren't the one who posted the new name. I would expect a debate with the person who actually nominated the name. It seems odd to me that you would jump in to debate when you had nothing to do with it.
In this case, Kingdom is an adjective. Sometimes words that are usually nouns can function as adjectives.
Evidence? The following:
http://www.rhlschool.com/eng8n1.htm
In grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a noun or pronoun, giving more information about the noun or pronoun's referent.
Link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjective
In this case, Kingdom helps modify Funhouse giving more information about it.
What information does it give? If I look up "kingdom" in a dictionary, I don't find any definitions for it as an adjective. Even if I accepted your argument that it can be used as an adjective, there is no way for me to be sure I get the meaning of the phrase. Only the writer truly knows what was meant, and as you've repeatedly pointed out, You isn't you.
I know it can be confusing to figure out. For instance, if I said I'm going to learn English, English here is a noun. Yet, if I say I'm going to eat an English muffin, here English is an adjective.
If I look up "English" in a dictionary, I find multiple definitions for its use as an adjective as well as its use as a noun and even as a verb. Far be it from me to promote a prescriptive view of the English language, but as I've already pointed out, that isn't true in the case of the word "kingdom." Since the main point of a language is to communicate ideas, it is very important that we choose words carefully to convey meaning. Dictionaries are tools that help us understand the meanings of words, and so using a word in a way that is not described in a dictionary is generally counterproductive to mutual understanding.
If one is going to use a word in such a way, one has to be very careful. If the audience cannot use the usual tools, i.e. dictionaries, to determine meaning, the onus is on the writer to make his or her meaning clear contextually or explicitly. The phrase in question is too short to provide any contextual clues. I must say that if the writer intended "kingdom" to be understandable as an adjective, we can all be sure that he or she is a very, very bad writer.
Here's a quick grade 4 English test that you can do to practice learning what is a noun and what is an adjective.
http://www.swsd.k12.pa.us/~marilee_carlson/HP%20Nouns-Adj/Noun-Adj1.htm
Hopefully, it will help you learn to become a better speaker of the English language and understand what you are talking about.
Indeed, that was interesting. Perhaps you should have tried it yourself, since it offers far better examples for your point than "English." I've taken the time to look up each of the words from that test in an online dictionary, and only one of them, specifically "kitchen," had definitions for its use as an adjective. You could have saved us both a lot of time if you had used "beach," "soap," or "baseball" instead of "English" in your argument in the first place. However, I'm not going to hold that against you.
Let's examine some of the sentences used in that test. Specifically, let's talk about how context is used in determining meaning in each case.
We watched a BASEBALL game on TV last night.In this example, "baseball" is describing "game." Now, what meaning does it provide? If we think about it, we remember that baseball is itself a variety of game, and that many people watch baseball being played on television. It is most likely the word is used here to specify the type of game being watched.
I like to rub my hands together and make SOAP bubbles.Here, "bubbles" is described by "soap." What do we know about soap? It is a substance that lathers, i.e. makes bubbles, when mixed with water and agitated, such as by a rubbing motion. We can therefore deduce that in this case, the word "soap" is telling us that the bubbles are the result of lathering soap. Furthermore, because of what we know about soap, we can infer that water was involved
even though the sentence doesn't mention any. This is an example of effective communication.
I love to sit on my BEACH towel and watch the waves.In this case, we see that the word "beach" describes the word "towel." There's a potential pitfall here because "beach" can also be a verb, and we might momentarily think that a "beach towel" was a towel used in the activity of beaching. Fortunately the rest of the sentence provides more context. Note that the speaker mentions sitting on the towel. At this point, one might recall sitting on a towel oneself and realize the meaning immediately, but if not, one might at least realize that beaching something is not an activity that would be done while sitting on a towel, and so turn to the noun form of "beach" instead.
In each example, it was possible to figure out what the word being used as an adjective meant from context. Now let's examine the proposed name for the Funhouse: Khushrenada's Kingdom Funhouse. Can we determine the meaning here, thus validating the use of the word "kingdom" as an adjective? In my opinion, we cannot. It seems far more likely to me that the word "kingdom" was chosen because it alliterates with Khushrenada's name, forming a catchy sounding name for the funhouse. In other words, "Khushrenada's Kingdom" is formed as a title that describes the Funhouse. This is an example of an adjectival compound, and it is valid grammar, but it does not conform to the rules for the name of the Funhouse.
I am sorry if that seems like a niggling technicality, but I believe careful study of the rules as laid down by Pale reveals that overcoming niggling technicalities is largely the point of this game of renaming the Funhouse.
Bottom line:
IF YOU ARE GOING TO FIGHT SOMEONE ON GRAMMAR, YOU BETTER KNOW THE RULES!
That is indeed true, but you shouldn't write in all capital letters. It's like yelling.
Topic: The discussion of a new Funhouse name thread (Read 47482 times)
