Reading the documentation
Chris Angelico
rosuav at gmail.com
Thu Aug 24 21:40:13 EDT 2017
On Fri, Aug 25, 2017 at 11:25 AM, Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet at bsb.me.uk> wrote:
> The use as a noun is not covered here, though it is only a small step
> from other places where membership of a mathematical set has turned the
> adjective into a noun. "Rational" and "real" started out as adjectives,
> but their use as nouns is now widespread. "The function returns a
> real". "The result is a rational". It's much less common for complex
> and integral, to the point that it sounds wrong to me.
This is a common thing in English (and many other languages). When you
find yourself frequently using similar phrases, you abbreviate them:
* real number -> real
* rational number -> rational
* complex number -> complex
Thus the adjective acquires a new meaning as a noun. As my mother (and
grammar teacher) drummed into me: No word is a part of speech unless
it appears in context.
ChrisA
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