[Grammar] red and gold

[tkacka15]

The falling leaves
Drift by my window
The falling leaves
Of red and gold


That's from the "Autumn Leaves" song lyrics and my question is:


what part of speech are "red" and "gold" in the song text?


Are they nouns or adjectives?


Thank you.

 

[MikeNewYork]

Adjectives.

 

[Raymott]

Adjectives following 'of'? I'd call them nouns.

 

[tkacka15]

Adjectives following 'of'? I'd call them nouns.

Thank you, Raymott, for your useful reply. What you've said is exactly what I suspected. My test on that is like that: what follows the preposition in the prepositional phrase has the structure of the noun phrase.

 

[MikeNewYork]

They describe "leaves".

 

[lotus888]

I think they are objects of an adjectival prepositional phrase.


http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/sting/fieldsofgold.html



--lotus

 

[tkacka15]

"I think they are objects of an adjectival prepositional phrase."

I understand that they function adjectivally here. But, what word class do they represent in the PP "of red and gold"?

 

[MikeNewYork]

That is possible. It is difficult to analyze song lyrics.

 

[Raymott]

They describe "leaves".

Of course they do.
"A creature of flesh and blood"; "A mug of pewter"; "A shade of red."
There are no adjectives there. "A pewter mug" contains an adjective. But that's a different grammatical phrase, even though it's semantically the same.

 

[MikeNewYork]

It seemed to me that they were trying to be adjectives. But I get your point.

 

[Matthew Wai]

I think they are adjectives if 'of' is omitted as in 'The falling leaves, red and gold, drift by my window', but I am not a teacher.

 

[MikeNewYork]

I agree.

 

[TheParser]

***** NOT A TEACHER *****


Hello, Tkacka:

When you get time, you may wish to read an article that I found in the "books" section of Google.

I will tell you his main points:

1. "Put a patch of red here."

a. He, I believe, parses "red" as a noun.

b. He also says "red" is concrete in "Put a patch of red [paint] here," and "red" is abstract in "Put a patch of red [color] here."

Source: You can read it by going to Google "books" and typing in: "A patch of red" Frank Ebersole