CHAPTER XXX
PECULIAR MODIFICATIONS
It is not uncommon to find words modified in what seems to us an ungrammatical way; for example, an article modifying an adjective, as in the phrase all the same, or an adverb modifying a noun, as in the sentence, “We walked the whole distance, exactly three miles,” where the adverb exactly is a modifier of the noun phrase three miles. Some of these modifications we shall now consider.
1. The article the modifying an adjective.—We find this in many phrases that have become current in literature no less than in conversation; for example, all the quicker, none the worse, quite the contrary, at the best. In some instances, as in the last example given, we may say that the adjective has become a substantive in meaning and hence may be modified by the article. In other cases a noun may be supplied after the adjective, and the article may be said to modify the noun. But in most cases the adjective is used in the sense of an adjective, and it is impossible, too, to supply any noun after it, so we must take the expression as we find it and say that the article modifies an adjective, the construction being idiomatical.
Illustrations of this construction are found in the following sentences:—
(a) “Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of seals watched them being driven, but they went on playing just the same.”—Kipling.
(b) “The negroes declared that under the old house were solid rock chambers which had been built for dungeons, and had served for purposes which were none the less awful because they were vague and indefinite.”
Many of these phrases contain a modifying adverb. In just the same, the adverb just modifies the same. In all the more we have all used adverbially to modify the more.
The base-word of these phrases is just as often an adverb as an adjective, as in the sentences, “This news only made us walk the faster”; “He did it none the worse for the many interruptions.”
2. In such expressions as a few books, a good many trees, the article a may seem at first thought to modify a plural noun; but this is not the case. The article modifies the pronominal adjectives few and many, having the meaning of collective nouns, that is, meaning individuals taken as a group instead of singly. This pronominal is then modified by the prepositional phrase of books, of trees, with the preposition of understood. Usage alone settles for us when the preposition is to be expressed. We say a few of them; but if we use a noun in place of the pronoun them we omit the preposition; as, a few pennies. We say a score of years, and a couple of years, but we omit the preposition after dozen, another word denoting number, and say a dozen years. After the collective noun crowd we express the preposition; as, a crowd of boys; but if we say a great many in place of crowd, we omit the preposition, saying a great many boys. For analysis, however, the preposition should always be supplied.