I want green?
It’s a sample sentence on a grammar test. The fifth-grade
student is asked to parse it. It looks easy: pronoun, verb, ah—green?
“Teacher, I’m having trouble with this sentence.”
“Imagine I held out two shirts, one red, one green and you
said, ‘I want green.’”
That’s all the help she can give.
He goes through his list of definitions. A noun is a person place thing or idea. It’s
not a person or a place. Is green a thing or an idea? He’s never understood
this idea of idea very well. Isn’t everything sort of an idea?
An adjective is a word
or phrase naming an attribute, added to or grammatically related to a noun to
modify or describe it.
Green is an attribute of the shirt. The shirt is the thing.
Green tells you something about the shirt. So it’s really an adjective, green.
But the word “shirt” isn’t in the sentence. But it’s
implied. Like the word “you” isn’t in the sentence “Go to hell!” And “that”
isn’t in the sentence, “It’s the shirt I want.” So green is an adjective.
Or is it a noun?
And is the more intelligent student the one who gets the
answer wrong or the one who gets the answer right? The one we reward or the one
we punish?
