(By David Gil): "Adjectives may occur either as predicates, for example This apple is red, or within noun phrases. When within noun phrases, they typically function as attributes to nouns, for example I want the red apple. However, in some cases, when the noun is either unimportant or is reconstructible from the discourse, it is absent from the construction, and, as a result, the adjective remains as the main lexical item within the noun phrase, denoting the understood object. An example of such a construction is: (1) I want the red one. ❡
In English, as suggested by this example, adjectives without nouns generally occur in construction with a grammatical marker, the proform one. However, in some other languages, adjectives without nouns may occur with different kinds of construction markers, and in yet others they may occur without any such markers whatsoever. Moreover, in a small number of languages, adjectives without nouns do not occur at all. This map displays the distribution of adjective-without-noun constructions, and the kinds of markers such constructions contain."