Really nice vid, thanks! ..Though still struggling with why it's 'hard-working' but 'brilliantly written'?? ..The -ly seems to mean no hyphen but still can't quite see the reasoning as they both modify!
It can be tricky because of irregular adverbs. And you are 100%: They both modify. And these are GREAT examples. The question though is "What do they modify?" Adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs. Adjectives modify nouns. If you have and adverb modifying and adjective, that is in turn modifying a noun, then no hyphen is needed. In your example, a 'brilliantly written novel' needs no hyphen because 'brilliantly' is an adverb that describe the adjective 'written' (which is a bit of odd adjective in that context but it can serve as an adjective) which in turn modifies the noun. In 'hard working horse.' That's tricky. Is 'hard' an irregular adverb (without an 'ly') that is modifying the adjective 'working'? If so, no hyphen because it is describing 'horse.' However, it 'working' functions as a noun (the act of working) that is being described as 'hard' (and adjective in that case) and the two are collectively describing the horse, then a hyphen would be needed. The semantics of that particular issue are interesting, and though there are subjective interpretations and potentially different intent, I've seen this combination typically hyphenated or simply put together in one word with no hyphen: hardworking. I often use Google ngram viewer to determine what the most prevalent usage is because, regardless of how 'prescriptive' grammatical rules suggest something should be done, 'descriptive' approaches simply observe how language is used, and how something is most often used usually ends up defining the rules that eventually get prescribed. Here's a link to the Google ngram view on 'hard working,' 'hard-working,' and 'hardworking,' all of which have been used. And thanks for the great question. I hope this helped: books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=hard+working%2C+hard-working%2C+hardworking&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3
Such a joy to watch!
Really nice vid, thanks! ..Though still struggling with why it's 'hard-working' but 'brilliantly written'?? ..The -ly seems to mean no hyphen but still can't quite see the reasoning as they both modify!
It can be tricky because of irregular adverbs.
And you are 100%: They both modify. And these are GREAT examples.
The question though is "What do they modify?"
Adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs.
Adjectives modify nouns.
If you have and adverb modifying and adjective, that is in turn modifying a noun, then no hyphen is needed.
In your example, a 'brilliantly written novel' needs no hyphen because 'brilliantly' is an adverb that describe the adjective 'written' (which is a bit of odd adjective in that context but it can serve as an adjective) which in turn modifies the noun.
In 'hard working horse.' That's tricky. Is 'hard' an irregular adverb (without an 'ly') that is modifying the adjective 'working'? If so, no hyphen because it is describing 'horse.' However, it 'working' functions as a noun (the act of working) that is being described as 'hard' (and adjective in that case) and the two are collectively describing the horse, then a hyphen would be needed. The semantics of that particular issue are interesting, and though there are subjective interpretations and potentially different intent, I've seen this combination typically hyphenated or simply put together in one word with no hyphen: hardworking.
I often use Google ngram viewer to determine what the most prevalent usage is because, regardless of how 'prescriptive' grammatical rules suggest something should be done, 'descriptive' approaches simply observe how language is used, and how something is most often used usually ends up defining the rules that eventually get prescribed.
Here's a link to the Google ngram view on 'hard working,' 'hard-working,' and 'hardworking,' all of which have been used.
And thanks for the great question. I hope this helped: books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=hard+working%2C+hard-working%2C+hardworking&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3