Conflicting Information on the Role of "Phenomenal" in a Sentence: Adjective or Adverb?

[vigilant_guy]

I've encountered a confusing situation regarding the use of adjectives and adverbs in a specific sentence, and I'm hoping to get some clarification.

The sentence in question is: "Someday Kim will be a phenomenal professional basketball player!"

My teacher claims that in this sentence, "phenomenal" is functioning as an adverb that modifies "professional basketball player." On the other hand, my tutoring session insists that "phenomenal" is an adjective that, along with "professional," modifies "basketball player."

To add context, my teacher argues that when two adjectives are combined without the word 'and,' the first one becomes an adverb. For example, in "phenomenal professional basketball player," my teacher says "phenomenal" is an adverb because it's combined with another adjective ("professional") without the use of 'and.'

I tried to Google this issue, and most of the results pointed towards the concept of compound adjectives, which seems to contradict what my teacher is saying

I'm trying to figure out who is correct in this situation. Could you please help me understand the grammatical rules that apply here?

Thank you!

 

[Rover_KE]

Welcome to the forum. vigilant_guy.

Please specify the source and author of the quoted sentence.

This is a forum rule.

 

[jutfrank]

It's an adjective and it's modifying 'professional basketball player'. It describes how good Kim is going to be in his career as a professional basketball player.

Try replacing the word 'phenomenal' with another adjective and this should be easy to understand:

a good professional basketball player
a mediocre professional basketball player
an excellent professional basketball player

I can only imagine that your teacher is misunderstanding what the word 'professional' means in the sentence. In this sentence, it basically means that Kim will earn a living from playing basketball. It can be contrasted with 'amateur basketball player'—someone who doesn't get paid a salary. Perhaps your teacher is mistakenly thinking that the word 'professional' is describing Kim's behaviour, as it does when we say things like She's very professional. Even so, the word 'phenomenal' still wouldn't work as an adverb since it's not in an adverb form.

Someday Kim will be a phenomenally professional basketball player.

In this sentence, phenomenally is an adverb, modifying professional.

 

[vigilant_guy]

Please specify the source and author of the quoted sentence.

The quote 'Someday Kim will be a phenomenal professional basketball player!' comes from a handout provided by my teacher, not from a book.

 

[PaulMatthews]

The quote 'Someday Kim will be a phenomenal professional basketball player!' comes from a handout provided by my teacher, not from a book.

Someday Kim will be a phenomenal professional basketball player!

“Phenomenal” is an adjective. The adverb form is “phenomenally”.

The underlined nominal contains a type of modification called “Stacking”, which works like this:

First, “player” is modified by “basketball” to form the nominal ”basketball player”. This is then modified by “professional” to give the larger nominal “professional basketball player”, and this in turn is modified by the adjective “phenomenal” to give the interpretation “player who is phenomenal by the usual standards applicable to professional basketball players”.

Is that what you wanted to know?

 

[milan2003_07]

I've encountered a confusing situation regarding the use of adjectives and adverbs in a specific sentence, and I'm hoping to get some clarification.

The sentence in question is: "Someday Kim will be a phenomenal professional basketball player!"

My teacher claims that in this sentence, "phenomenal" is functioning as an adverb that modifies "professional basketball player." On the other hand, my tutoring session insists that "phenomenal" is an adjective that, along with "professional," modifies "basketball player."

To add context, my teacher argues that when two adjectives are combined without the word 'and,' the first one becomes an adverb. For example, in "phenomenal professional basketball player," my teacher says "phenomenal" is an adverb because it's combined with another adjective ("professional") without the use of 'and.'

I tried to Google this issue, and most of the results pointed towards the concept of compound adjectives, which seems to contradict what my teacher is saying

I'm trying to figure out who is correct in this situation. Could you please help me understand the grammatical rules that apply here?

Thank you!

I appreciate the responses given by my colleagues above. When I read your sentence I immediately realized that "phenomenal" is an adjective, not an adverb. As a non-native speaker (and I also know this from some of my friends' experiences) we can doubt the adjective order, but here it's evident. So it's an adjective.