Editing Grammatical modifier (section)

==Premodifiers and postmodifiers==
Modifiers may come before or after the modified element (the ''[[head (linguistics)|head]]''), depending on the type of modifier and the rules of [[syntax]] for the language in question. A modifier placed before the head is called a '''premodifier'''; one placed after the head is called a '''postmodifier'''.
For example, in ''land mines'', the word ''land'' is a premodifier of ''mines'', whereas in the phrase ''mines in wartime'', the phrase ''in wartime'' is a postmodifier of ''mines''. A head may have a number of modifiers, and these may include both premodifiers and postmodifiers. For example:
* ''that nice tall man from Canada whom you met''
In this noun phrase, ''man'' is the head, ''nice'' and ''tall'' are premodifiers, and ''from Canada'' and ''whom you met'' are postmodifiers.

In English, simple adjectives are usually used as premodifiers, with occasional exceptions such as ''[[wikt:galore|galore]]'' (which always appears after the noun, coming from [[Irish language|Irish]] in which most adjectives are postmodifiers) or the adjectives ''[[wikt:immemorial|immemorial]]'' and ''[[wikt:martial|martial]]'' in the phrases ''[[wikt:time immemorial|time immemorial]]'' and ''[[wikt:court martial|court martial]]'' (the latter comes from [[French language|French]], where most adjectives are postmodifiers). Sometimes placement of the adjective after the noun entails a change of meaning: compare ''a responsible person'' and ''the person responsible'', or ''the proper town'' (the appropriate town) and ''the town proper'' (the area of the town as properly defined).

In English (and other languages) a modifier can be separated from its head by other modifiers, making the phrase ''discontinuous'', as in ''The man here whom you bumped into in the street yesterday'', where the relative clause ''whom...yesterday'' is separated from the word it modifies (''man'') by the modifier ''here''. In some other languages, words other than modifiers may occur in between; this type of situation is especially likely in languages with [[free word order]], and often agreement between the grammatical gender, number or other feature of the modifier and its head is used to indicate the relationship. In English, modifiers may sometimes even be interposed between component words or syllables of the head, such as in [[split infinitive]]s (''to boldly go'') or [[infixation]], most commonly [[expletive infixation]] (''in-fucking-credible'').<ref>{{Cite web |last=Melly |first=Bethanie |date=2020-11-10 |title=Infixes - The English grammar rule you don't know you know |url=https://www.star-uk.co.uk/the-english-grammar-rule-you-dont-know-you-know/ |access-date=2023-02-17 |website=STAR UK |language=en-US}}</ref>