[Grammar] People Dead or Dead People

LilyAm · Sep 17, 2011

Some part of a history book reads:
"But such uprisings as the Ole Miss riots seldom come without victims. It had been a nasty night of fighting and resentment, and trails of blood and a ground layer of thick, powdery teargas residue lingered that following day. In the end, there were two people dead and 166 wounded."

Why is "dead" after "people" but not before? I do know that "wounded" could come after "166 [people]" because it is formed from the verb "wound". But "dead" has no verb form.

Tdol · Sep 17, 2011

Two people dead has a meaning similar to two people who had been killed.

TheParser · Sep 17, 2011

LilyAm said:
Some part of a history book reads:
"But such uprisings as the Ole Miss riots seldom come without victims. It had been a nasty night of fighting and resentment, and trails of blood and a ground layer of thick, powdery teargas residue lingered that following day. In the end, there were two people dead and 166 wounded."

Why is "dead" after "people" but not before? I do know that "wounded" could come after "166 [people]" because it is formed from the verb "wound". But "dead" has no verb form.

REMINDER: NOT A TEACHER

I most respectfully suggest that it is a short way to write:

In the end, there were two people [who were] dead and 166 [who were] wounded.

billmcd · Sep 17, 2011

LilyAm said:
Some part of a history book reads:
"But such uprisings as the Ole Miss riots seldom come without victims. It had been a nasty night of fighting and resentment, and trails of blood and a ground layer of thick, powdery teargas residue lingered that following day. In the end, there were two people dead and 166 wounded."

Why is "dead" after "people" but not before? I do know that "wounded" could come after "166 [people]" because it is formed from the verb "wound". But "dead" has no verb form.

Adjectives of quality e.g. 'happy', 'rich', 'alive' (or lack of quality as in 'dead') can go before their nouns or after some verbs such as 'be' (and its forms), 'seem','become'. (Practical English Grammar, Oxford University Press)

LilyAm · Sep 17, 2011

billmcd said:
Adjectives of quality e.g. 'happy', 'rich', 'alive' (or lack of quality as in 'dead') can go before their nouns or after some verbs such as 'be' (and its forms), 'seem','become'. (Practical English Grammar, Oxford University Press)

But in my example, the adjective of quality (dead) comes AFTER the noun (people).

LilyAm · Sep 17, 2011

If "In the end, there were two people dead and 166 wounded." is acceptable, would "In the end, there were two people happy and 166 unhappy." be too?

emsr2d2 · Sep 17, 2011

LilyAm said:
If "In the end, there were two people dead and 166 wounded." is acceptable, would "In the end, there were two people happy and 166 unhappy." be too?

Acceptable, yes. Unusual, yes.

However, I am not saying that we would normally say "in the end, there were two happy people and 166 unhappy people". The "there were" construction doesn't really fit. I would be more likely to say "In the end, two people were happy and 166 were unhappy."

[Grammar] People Dead or Dead People

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