| Confusion of terminology is the problem there. |
|
Yes. And the problem runs even deeper into the whole idea of word
classes ("parts of speech"). In your example, the obvious
question is "Does the noun
(television) remain a noun when used
as an adjective, or does it become an adjective, or does it become both
a noun and an adjective at the same time?"
We often speak of words as having fixed membership in a word class
(noun, adjective, verb, ...) when in fact maybe we should speak of them
as taking these membership properties quite flexibly from their
functional context.
At various times students are told that
tomorrow is an adverb, an adjective, a noun.
In the sentence below, it's a noun used as an adjective in a phrase used as an adverb. Or is it something else?
I'll talk to you about it tomorrow morning.
More to the point, who really cares? I know that millions of people use the word
tomorrow
correctly in all contexts without ever knowing which part of speech it
is! Or even what a "part of speech" is! And yet, in some
class rooms, hours and hours of instructional time is wasted on the
most minute parsing of such structures.
You're right. It's confusion.
CJ