<p>At the reception were the chattering guests, the three-tiered cake, and the lively music that have become characteristic of many wedding celebrations.</p>
<p>Why shouldn't "characteristic of" be "characteristic*s* of"?</p>
<p>Thanks in advance!</p>
<p>I’m no grammar whiz, but I would say that it should be as you said “characteristics”.</p>
<p>No, it should be “characteristic of.” It’s an adjective phrase not a noun, so you wouldn’t pluralize it. One can say that something is characteristic of something, or that it is a characteristic of something. In the first sense, it is an adjective; in the second sense, it is a noun.</p>
<p>How do we know if it is an adjective phrase or a noun phrase?</p>
<p>Well, it has no article (article + noun: a characteristic), so it has to be an adjective. Something can either become bad or become a bad thing, for example. The first one has no article but the second one does. If someone does something disrespectful, you might say, “How disrespectful of you!” or you might say, “I don’t like your disrespect (or ‘the disrespect of you’).”</p>
<p>Characteristic as an adjective means being a trait, or distinctive.
Characteristic as a noun means trait, or distinguishing thing.</p>
<p>Both work; you can say that a trait is characteristic of something else (it’s “distinctive”), or you can say it is a characteristic (a trait) of it. The latter is apparently more straightforward: “Green and red are characteristics of Christmas,” but you can also say, “Green and red are characteristic (distinctive or distinguishing) of Christmas.” Lots of adjectives end in -ic: heroic, poetic, acidic. It’s the same type of word; it just happens to be spelled the same way as its noun counterpart.</p>