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Adjective placement in complex phrase

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gscottoliver
United States of America

Adjective placement in complex phrase

Post by gscottoliver »

Over on SpanishDict, I ran into the following example (with translation):

Alguien le coló un billete de cien dólares falso al cajero de la tienda.Somebody passed a fake hundred-dollar bill to the store cashier.

My question is about falso—shouldn’t it directly follow billete? After all, it isn’t the dollars that are fake (I know, I know), it’s the bill.

I’m sure we do the same thing in English. There’s even a name for it: misplaced modifiers. Anyone have any good reason for the phrasing given?

ScottO
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Cifi

Re: Adjective placement in complex phrase

Post by Cifi »

I tend to see two nouns connected with de (without article) as compound nouns, thus an entity you would not split.

One I remember on Duolingo was "castillo de arena", where Duolingo put it "castillo enorme de arena" while I would have preferred "castillo de arena enorme".

Another example might be "traje de camarero" (typical waiter dress) vs "traje del camarero" (the waiter's suit, could be any the waiter happens to wear). With the latter, likely it should be "traje sucio del camarero", but in my understanding "traje de camarero sucio" works and still refers to the clothes and not the person being dirty.

Last edited by Cifi on Tue Feb 07, 2023 1:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Explorer
Portugal

Re: Adjective placement in complex phrase

Post by Explorer »

  • Un billete de cien dólares falso
  • Un billete falso de cien dólares

Both are right and sound perfectly natural. In these examples the position of the adjective doesn't change the meaning of the sentence. Falso is connected to billete in any case.

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