He walked about in a rich man's clothes.

[navi tasan]

1) He walked about in rich man's clothes.
2) He walked about in rich-man clothes.
3) He walked about in a rich man's clothes.

I wrote the sentences.

I am trying to figure out how the 'rich man' could be turned into an adjective. I think in #3 we are simply saying that he was walking about wearing a specific rich man's clothes. We are not talking about the type of clothes he was wearing. It seems to me that in #2 'rich-man' does indeed work as an adjective. One could probably use 'rich man' in quotation marks as well. How about #1. To me it does not really sound correct and I can't parse it. But maybe that is one way of turning 'rich man' into an adjective?

Am I correct about #2 and #3? How about #1?

Any feedback will be greatly appreciated.

 

[Annabel Lee]

1) He walked about in rich man's clothes.
2) He walked about in rich-man clothes.
3) He walked about in a rich man's clothes.

I am trying to figure out how the 'rich man' could be turned into an adjective.

Both (1) and (2) work with adjectival meaning, but (1) sounds more natural to me. It's a descriptive-possessive construction; the reason there's no indefinite article before rich man's is that it's not referring to a particular rich man and clothes, being plural, cannot be used with the indefinite article. I do think the construction in (2) is natural in some cases:

He walked around in surfer clothes.​

I agree with you about (3); it's referring to a particular rich man. However, if the head noun were singular (e.g., coat), there would be ambiguity. Thus, in the sentence He walked around in a rich man's coat, we can't tell whether to parse a rich man's coat as [a rich man]'s coat (the coat of a particular rich man) or as a [rich man's coat] (descriptive possessive).

 

[navi tasan]

Thank you so very much for this detailed response.

One more question here:

3) He bought rich men's clothes.

How would you interpret that?

 

[jutfrank]

How would you interpret that?

That it also refers to type of clothes like 1). Yes, it's ambiguous.