Confused

[marteliza]

How in the world is "Nice" an adjective in the sentence "Nice to meet you", I was teaching my students, from their student book, an introduction to adjectives, and it pointed out the basic rule adjective always coming before a noun, when it came down to do some exercises to identify adjectives in sentences, the sentence Nice to meet you came up and of course the students were very confused because the rule doesn´t apply here ! Where is the noun here? Can someone clarify?

Thanks so much experienced teachers,

[TheParser]

How in the world is "Nice" an adjective in the sentence "Nice to meet you", I was teaching my students, from their student book, an introduction to adjectives, and it pointed out the basic rule adjective always coming before a noun, when it came down to do some exercises to identify adjectives in sentences, the sentence Nice to meet you came up and of course the students were very confused because the rule doesn´t apply here ! Where is the noun here? Can someone clarify?

Thanks so much experienced teachers,

***** A NON-TEACHER's COMMENT *****


(1) As you know, an adjective does not always come before

a noun: The United States is large.

(2) I think that "Nice to meet you" is just a short way to

say "It is/was nice to meet you."

(a) That is:

It (to meet you) is/was nice.

(i) In such a sentence, the adjective "nice" refers to the subject which is

"it." It is/was nice. "To meet you" explains the "it." (It is nice; what is

nice? To meet you.)


Respectfully yours,


James


P.S. I think that your students would be amused to learn that

many, many, many years ago, "nice" = stupid or ignorant!!! Just check

any good dictionary about the history of that word.

[marteliza]

Thanks so much for your reply and clarifications. I have heard about the old definition of "nice", a good piece of information for them!