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”I did some difficult studying last night."

Could I say, "昨夜、難しい勉強しました。”?

Basically, my question is: can an adjective, relative clause, or adjectival
phrase modify a noun that has する attached, for example 勉強をする or 勉強する? And does
it make that word or phrase actually adverbial when applied like that?
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2011-10-06T17:41:49.320
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2014-08-25T13:27:05.567
2014-08-25T13:27:05.567
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grammar adjectives
Can a noun + suru have an adjective modify the noun as well?
(The combination 難しい勉強 sounds slightly off to me, but I put this aside for the
purpose of this question.)

You have to distinguish noun+する and noun+をする.

  * Noun+する: Once you attach する, what was originally a noun becomes a verb, and you cannot modify it with an adjective.
  * Noun+をする: Attaching をする does not change a noun to a verb, and you can still modify it with an adjective.

For example, 難しい勉強する is ungrammatical (although this is not unheard of),
whereas 難しい勉強をする is grammatical.
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2011-10-06T17:58:20.337
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2011-10-06T17:58:20.337
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I agree with Tsuyoshi's answer.

Here's [a research paper](http://www.ling.hf.ntnu.no/tross/shimadaKordoni.pdf)
discussing these する constructions.

The relevant section states:

> "In addition, the VN occurring with the light verb suru cannot be modiﬁed by
> an adjectival phrase (subayai ‘quick’ in (5a)), but can be modiﬁed by an
> adverbial modiﬁer such as subayaku ‘quickly’ in (5b)"
```

>  
>        5. a. *Taroo-ga piza-o subayai HAITATSU sita.
>               Taro-Nom pizza-Acc quick delivery did
>        b.     Taroo-ga piza-o subayaku HAITASU sita.
>               Taro-Nom pizza-Acc quickly delivery did
>        ‘Taro deliveried pizzas quickly
>  
```

It's pretty dense reading, but the first chunk of it is pretty understandable.
You may be interested in the last part if you're into linguistics at all or
are just masochistic.
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2011-10-06T18:44:52.593
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