You're arguing with a Master of Arts with Honours in Descriptive Linguistics.
I used 'bungalowed' as an example because adjectives are also an open class. Bungalowed is a noun-adjective lexical transformation. Beautiful is an adjective-noun lexical transformation.
Let it the **** go.
Ugh, I really hate when people try to put there credentials out there as if that means they can never be wrong. No one cares what degree you have. Doctors kill people all the time on accident and they train for years. Beautiful can never be a noun unless it is proper. It is very different to the word stretch, which you used in an example above.
If you wanted me to let it go, you wouldn't have commented back.
Silly. I'll just take my MA in Descriptive Linguistics with me and walk out the door then. I'm trying to dumb it down so it's easy to understand - not everyone on here is an academic so to write an essay on the fluidity of lexical categories would be deliriously boring and confusing. Yes 'stretch' was a bad example. What about eternal?
Let's go again:
Nouns are an open class. Meaning you can add whatever word you like and use it as a noun. So long as it's understood as a noun semantically, grammatical 'correctness' doesn't even come into it. In the first instance of a word being used in an usual way e.g. 'bungalowed' as a word describing get completely off your face drunk, it is called a nonse-word (yes this is a linguistic term), and every instance in which it is used by other people henceforth makes it a 'proper' word. It'll most likely be in the OED as a noun next year*.
Semantics could say that to use beautiful as an noun makes it an object - a cold object that can be removed as if moving a wall, which is the connotative meaning of the song. What he's saying is that the beautiful isn't a personality characteristic - it's a sort of bolt-on that's there whenever she goes out and meets other people, closing off the real her by simply putting on a beautiful.
Don't be such a boring prescriptivist.
* It already is in the OED as a noun:
"That which is beautiful; the beautiful n. the name given to the general notion which the mind forms of the assemblage of qualities which constitute beauty"
I'm still sure it's meant to be 'beneath you're beautiful'. I really, really hate when people misspell 'your'. I remember in school we used to have to write it out lots of times if we did it wrong, and I'm not even that old!
Even if youre gonna leave off the apostrophe as I sometimes do, stick an e on the end. Its ONE more key...celebs on twitter spell stuff wrong all the time though
Wauw, we got a lot of stuck up people in here... To me, the song title is a clever play with words, regardless of how "boring and bland" the song might be.
The song is called 'Beneath Your Beautiful' and its a duet between Emeli Sande and some guy. The guy wrote it, I'm pretty sure.
I'm pretty sure this is what it should be and they've retconned its meaning to cover up for the spelling mistake on the single. The sad thing is a lot of people wont've noticed (sigh)
Because "beautiful" is used as a noun in this instance. The song is about seeing behind a wall someone has put up and their "beautiful" is representative of the beautiful shell they put on display. Therefore the use of "your" rather than "you're" is correct.
If anything is a medium for playing about with words and breaking the rules it's poetry and lyric writing.
(Proviso- I'm neither here nor there in terms of liking the song...)
It's not like writing a clear concise essay. Crypticness is part of songs.
As said previously, it's word play, using something that's not usually a noun, classic breaking the rules.
As for the idea it was a spelling/punctuation mistake.... I don't think so. You wouldn't abruptly come in with the full sentence 'You're Beautiful' after asking her to let him 'see beneath?'. Well it's possible but sounds very jarring. Aurally / melodically it jarrs that way as well.
However I think Labyrinth probably intended that as a second reading of the meaning, get people thinking, talking, bit of fun duality.... in the title though he states his primary deeper intention which as suggested is probably to do with the woman's 'beautiful', as a noun, her outer layer.
Comments
Ugh, I really hate when people try to put there credentials out there as if that means they can never be wrong. No one cares what degree you have. Doctors kill people all the time on accident and they train for years. Beautiful can never be a noun unless it is proper. It is very different to the word stretch, which you used in an example above.
If you wanted me to let it go, you wouldn't have commented back.
Ok, it's a noun. What does the lyric mean, then?
Even if youre gonna leave off the apostrophe as I sometimes do, stick an e on the end. Its ONE more key...celebs on twitter spell stuff wrong all the time though
Loosen up, it is just a song.
Could it be "See beneath, you're beautiful?"
"So in love", I'd understand but "Stone in love"?
The song is called 'Beneath Your Beautiful' and its a duet between Emeli Sande and some guy. The guy wrote it, I'm pretty sure.
I'm pretty sure this is what it should be and they've retconned its meaning to cover up for the spelling mistake on the single. The sad thing is a lot of people wont've noticed (sigh)
Eternal - Wanna Be The Only One. It's "You deserve a mansion" too which the response is "my lord you too".
(Proviso- I'm neither here nor there in terms of liking the song...)
It's not like writing a clear concise essay. Crypticness is part of songs.
As said previously, it's word play, using something that's not usually a noun, classic breaking the rules.
As for the idea it was a spelling/punctuation mistake.... I don't think so. You wouldn't abruptly come in with the full sentence 'You're Beautiful' after asking her to let him 'see beneath?'. Well it's possible but sounds very jarring. Aurally / melodically it jarrs that way as well.
However I think Labyrinth probably intended that as a second reading of the meaning, get people thinking, talking, bit of fun duality.... in the title though he states his primary deeper intention which as suggested is probably to do with the woman's 'beautiful', as a noun, her outer layer.
No one said it was Shakespeare!