Age construction: year_old, month_old

[nschneid]

We have been treating "X old" as an MWE even though X can technically be any amount of time. There are 3 usages of this construction: predicative (I am 2 years old), attributive (my 2 year old son arrived), and referring by metonymy (my 2 year old arrived).

This construction consists of (a) a numerical quantity, (b) a unit of temporal measurement, and (c) the adjective "old" denoting age as an attribute.

For the referring usage, it would be useful to know that a person is implied. Thus:

• my 2 year_old(N-n.PERSON) arrived

For the attributive and predicative usages, it seems the most consistent approach would be to call it an adjectival MWE:

• I am 2 years_old
• my 2 year_old(ADJ) son arrived

These analyses are not perfect since semantically, the number goes more with the unit of measure than with "old". C'est la vie.

Related: #51