grammar - On reading "The Sacred"


Sacred is an adjective (Random House Dictionary, 1967). It would seem that one cannot let te word simply dangle: it must refer to something (as in: the sacred land; the sacred text.) Yet the (translated) title of Rudolph Otto's famous book is:



The Idea of the Holy.



True, it obviously is a Germanism. The (relevant part of the) original title is:



Das Heilige.



Has that form now become commonplace enough so that I may speak of "The Sacred" as in the title I am contemplating, for a paper discussing interpretation of sacred texts:



"On Reading the Sacred"?




Answer



This is an example of a fused Modifier-Head construction, as described in The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (Huddleston & Pullum, 2002). Here the adjective sacred is functioning as the Head of the noun phrase. But it is also understood as a Modifier of some unexpressed noun. Here are some more examples:



  • the good, the bad and the ugly

  • the French, the English, the Dutch

  • You take the red, and I'll take the blue

  • the blind, the poor

  • the best was yet to come


We can also find determiners functioning as fused Modifier-Heads



  • I'll take the two by the door.


The Original Poster's fused Modifier-Head noun phrase is commonly seen in in partnership with another in the binomial:



  • the sacred and the profane.


All of these, of course, are completely grammatical. We wouldn't call sacred a proper noun here, though. It's occurring with a determiner. But most importantly, it isn't a noun!


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