Percent part of speech

Question

You got 20 percent of the answers right - that means one in every five.Cambridge introduces "percent" as an adverb. However, other dictionaries believe it's a noun.What do you think?

Clive · Accepted Answer

My dictionary shows it as both.

BillJ · Answer

You got 20 percent of the answers right - that means one in every five.

"Percent" is best analysed as a noun, typically functioning as head of a noun phrase in proportional constructions and as object of a preposition.

1. Proportional construction:

Twenty percent of the answers are right.

Twenty percent of the cheese is contaminated.

Here, "percent" belongs with the number-transparent nouns where the number of the noun that is object of the preposition of determines the number of the whole NP for agreement purposes, i.e. whether the verb is singular or plural.

2. As object of a preposition:

My gas tariff has just gone up by seven percent.

Here, "percent" is head of the NP "seven percent", functioning as object of the preposition "by".

Note that "percent" cannot be an adverb here since determiners do not occur with adverbs.

Anonymous · Answer

So, Cambridge is wrong.

Percent part of speech

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