When refering to two distinct objects that share the same noun, can you omit one instance of the noun and leave only the corresponding adjective?

Solution 1:

Yes, you can. The rule describing this pattern is called "conjunction reduction". However, abbreviating in this way does potentially introduce ambiguity. Your example "The red and blue balls are in the corner" illustrates this. The subject could refer to a mixture of monocolor red balls and blue balls, or several bicolor balls each of which is colored both red and blue.

Solution 2:

Forms using and (and or, and some other words) are called "coordinations", and can occur at several different levels:

Sentences:

I went home and Lauren stayed at the office.

Predicates:

I went home and had a cup of tea.

Noun phrases:

John and Jenny went to the theatre.

I ate a sandwich and a bowl of soup

Verb phrases:

I read through, and decided to approve, the report

Modifiers in noun phrases:

We played with red and blue balls.

In many cases, if the branches of the coordination have something in common, that something can be extracted from the coordination:

I went to the shop and I went to the launderette -> I went to the shop and the launderette.

We played with red balls and blue balls -> We played with red and blue balls.

The "suspended hyphen" rule is not really relevant. It is a rule of spelling (or punctuation, if you will: I call it spelling). This is part of written language, which is an aberrant and dependent part of language. If people use a structure in speech, then it exists in the language, whether or not people can agree how it should be written.