Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Adjectives can be - and often are - used in place of nouns as direct objects. Eg consider the sentence "I like red better than blue". What are "red" and "blue" in that sentence?
Would you consider there to be a grammatical difference between the sentences "I feel angry" and "I feel anger"? Both "anger" and "angry" are being used as the object of a transitive verb, although one is a noun and the other an adjective.
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"Red" and "blue" are nouns in that sentence, of course. As you said upthread, the same word can have a different function depending on usage and usage determines the category.
Yes, there's a grammatical difference in the two sentences. In "I feel angry," "feel" is intransitive, while in "I feel anger," "feel" is transitive. I was being a bit facetious upthread when I referred to the transitive "feel" as referring to the tactile sense, as of course it can be used in the emotional sense, but only so long as it has an object.
The difference is between "I feel
how" and "I feel
what. "Feel" as a transitive verb requires an object. Objects by definition are nouns, even if adapted from the adjective: good, bad, beautiful and so forth, frequently but not necessarily identified as a noun by the addition of "the."
It's akin to the difference between participles and gerunds, which are formed in the same manner and are identical, but where usage determines the category of the word.