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One quite often sees the phrase 'Swiss made', so one assumes the following are also idiomatic: 'French made', 'Italian made', 'German made'....

But what is this construction? Simply an adjective used as adverb?

Like "perfectly done"?

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  • Your question is not grammatical. Do you mean whose theory? You cannot say what’s theory as a contraction and it is very confusing as a possessive.
    – tchrist
    Commented Sep 11, 2019 at 5:08
  • What adverb? Can you cite some examples?
    – Kris
    Commented Sep 11, 2019 at 11:13
  • It's adj.+past-participle. HTH.
    – Kris
    Commented Sep 11, 2019 at 12:16
  • @Kris - if you care to understand this question go back to the original version, which is ungrammatical but clear enough.
    – user 66974
    Commented Sep 11, 2019 at 12:17
  • Your question contradicts itself. You know the participle "made" is an adjective, so what would be the adverb would be the word that modifies "made," so in this case, "French," etc. But that's not what's going on here. Rather, what's happening is a compound adjective is being formed out of a noun (e.g., French) and a participle (i.e., "made"), thus conveying who made the noun the compound adjective describes. The participle is derived from the past-tense of a verb and the noun serves as its would-be subject. Compound adjectives like this are typically hyphenated (i.e., "Swiss-made"). Commented Sep 11, 2019 at 16:29

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It's a compound adjective (not an adverb). There is a huge class of these expressions with the format noun plus past participle, such as "wind-powered", "sun-dried", "middle-aged", "German-made", "strawberry-flavoured"...

Often you use a hyphen in these expressions but it's not essential. The APA style guide says to only use a hyphen to avoid ambiguity or if the compound adjective is used before the noun it modifies, so "client-centred counselling" but "the counselling was client centred".

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