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The teacher won't have a problem, unless you say something stupid like, "I like reading very books and listening to very music." That is nonsense in the same vein as saying, "I like stinky music and loud books."

In the right context, "very" is perfectly acceptable in front of a noun, and any teacher who says otherwise has no business as an English teacher.

Surely you've all heard phrases such as, "To this very day..." or "Dr. Smith is the very man we've been searching for!"

Okay, seriously. Observe:

Person One: A dog was barking outside my window last night.
Person Two: Really? That sucks. Hey look! There's a brown dog over there! Is that the dog that was barking?
Person One: Yes, that very dog was barking. (Here, 'very' means 'the dog that was previously being mentioned'.)

And that is the correct usage. =P

yup, that works in old English, but teachers now days are dumb... (at least my English teacher who had us read books about fourteen year old sluts and a ten year old prostitute, along with various other books all about teen aged sex maniacs 0.o and yet I got bad grades just for stating my own opinion in a opinionated paper lol, stupid teacher probably likes the fact of getting a teenager pregnant.....wait....that has nothing to do with this) anyway... why the heck are you a frog?

as relating to this topic (sorry for the blurb above this) the word "very" has not been used in that context for many years, though I have heard it once or twice in old movies, I doubt anyone around where I live anyways talks like that any more.

I'm gonna be completely honest here and admit I have no idea what "adumbrative" means, and even upon looking it up, it looks like the kind of word someone only uses when they grab a thesaurus. xd

Now, is anyone even debating over the concept of "extremely" being an adverb? I thought the point was that "very" was ambiguous yet "extremely" was definitely an adverb? Or wait... Was the point to simply prove that since "extremely" is definitely an adverb, you can't find a noun for it to modify? I'm so lost in this thread. sweatdrop

Anyway, I see the point of "very" (adv) and "very" (adj) being homonyms, although I never really thought of them that way. I pretty much just considered them a single word with two distinctly separate uses, much like many English words and words of analytic languages. Also, adjective "very" is not archaic, though its use does seem to be limited to formal speech, southern speech, etc (though of course, this is highly debatable but I'd rather not spend any more time on this tired subject).

These kinds of problems are probably present in any language, and often pop up unintentionally in more mature (ie fully developed) conlangs.

The only reason we see them in English is because most of us have been speaking English for at least 15 years, if not all of our lives (for those older than 15 :b ).

See my post (somewhere around here, I think it was in this thread but maybe not...) about Mandarin Chinese and how there are many instances of where a single word might be able to be used as a noun, verb, adverb, and adjective... Same word, different interpretations depending on context and usage. And in Chinese you don't get the luxury of having obvious suffixes that hint at a word's function. Actually, from what I've learned in a year's study of Mandarin, these kinds of problems are going to be a lot more common the further I get into the language, due to the insane number of homonyms. Or, more accurately, "recycled" syllables, since a lot of Mandarin words are multisyllabic.

We take English's good parts for granted. We complain when we have words like there/their/they're or two/to/too... But in Chinese, even WITH tones considered, you could have as many as 15 homonyms of a given syllable. (Maybe more, I've never actually counted)

Finally! You admit that very can be considered an adverb! So why in the name of Ganto's Ax are you arguing with me about that? Do you actually use the "very [noun]" construction more often than you use very to modify an adjective or adverb? Please excuse me if I am a bit incredulous.

I keep bringing up "extremely" because you know that they act the same syntactically as adverbs, so I was trying to get you to abandon that case about reference and move on to the actual subject of consideration.
Am I being ridiculous on purpose? Yes, because I figured that it would work better to try to cut off that stupid reference situation. Apparently that didn't work as well as I thought it would because apparently a few people here are deliberately obtuse pedants who think that they are oh so clever because they've found a homonym. You all knew what I was talking about, and as hilarious as it is for all of you to use the exact same pseudo-counterexample rather than contributing something meaningful, I find myself less than amused.
I was hoping that by moving to a different word without that one case, I could demonstrate indirectly that "very" can be used as an adverb. But no, everyone was too smug with having found that one adjectival use of "very".

So, would it possible for us to move on and consider "extremely" as an adverb, or do people want to nitpick on this issue more? As much as I love arguing over a very (USED AS AN ADVERB) trivial matter with people whom I am very (USE AS AN ADVERB) quickly losing patience with, I would much prefer to talk about something with non-negative worth.

No need to be bitter. And I sure hope you aren't referring to me as one of your so-called pedants. No one was trying to prove you wrong in anyway except for the part where you say "try this in front of a teacher."

Did anyone even say that "extremely" wasn't an adverb? Because "extremely" fits into that category of adverbs that are supposed to be obvious because they end in -ly and are formed from adjectives. And I think JeSuisMustapha conceded to all but the "very as an adverb" argument already, including "extremely" as an adverb, before he asked about copulas and why we use certain adjectives with copulas.

Separately it is possible, together it is no longer a language.