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Anonymous

#403066 Sat, 11 Aug 07 06:38 AM

Hello

I'm an English learner from Japan and I have a question.

Please look the sentence "This is NO easy task". What part of speech is "NO" in the sentence? My English-Japanese dictionaries say this NO is an Adjective because it modifies and negates the phrase "easy task". But I understand that "task" is a Countable Noun and if I am right, I think we maybe need to put some determiner before "no (Adj) + easy (Adj) + task (countable N)". So I think this "NO" is rather a kind of negative article (or determiner) that is equivalent to the German "KEIN". Am I right?

Thank you in advance

Anonymous

Articles, Nouns, Negatives, Countable nouns, Determiners

Clive

#403073 Sat, 11 Aug 07 07:17 AM

Hi,

Please look the sentence "This is NO easy task". What part of speech is "NO" in the sentence? My English-Japanese dictionaries say this NO is an Adjective because it modifies and negates the phrase "easy task". But I understand that "task" is a Countable Noun and if I am right, I think we maybe need to put some determiner before "no (Adj) + easy (Adj) + task (countable N)". So I think this "NO" is rather a kind of negative article (or determiner) that is equivalent to the German "KEIN". Am I right?

I can't compare to the German language. However, I would agree that 'no' is a determiner here.

We also say things like

Tom is no honest man.

No excuse(s) will be accepted.

No man is an island.

No bus stops on Main Street.

Best wishes, Clive