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1
Rind, Miles, and Lauren Tillinghast. "What Is an Attributive Adjective?" Philosophy 83, no. 1 (2008): 77–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0031819108000314.
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AbstractPeter Geach's distinction between logically predicative and logically attributive adjectives has become part of the technical apparatus of philosophers, but no satisfactory explanation of what an attributive adjective is has yet been provided. Geach's discussion suggests two different ways of understanding the notion. According to one, an adjective is attributive just in case predications of it in combination with a noun fail to behave in inferences like a logical conjunction of predications. According to the other, an adjective is attributive just in case it cannot be applied in a truth-value-yielding fashion unless combined with a noun. The latter way of understanding the notion yields both a more defensible version of Geach's arguments that ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are attributive and a more satisfactory explanation of attributivity.
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Clasmeier, Christina. "Niebieski ptak und cukier biały – Eine Klassifikation und Korpusanalyse der Funktion und Wortfolge polnischer Farbadjektive." Zeitschrift für Slawistik 65, no. 1 (2020): 96–133. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/slaw-2020-0005.
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SummaryThis paper investigates the position of Polish color adjectives in their attributive function in the noun phrase. In general, Polish attributive adjectives may precede the noun (AN) or follow it (NA). There is rich literature on this issue, especially on the motivation for AN or NA order in particular semantic classes of adjectives or types of adjective-noun constructions. However, most of the contributions are theoretical in nature and account for only a part of linguistic reality but fail to capture the entire scope of data. One of the reasons for this might be that, so far, no systematic empirical analysis of this specific syntactical phenomenon has been conducted. This paper presents the results from a corpus analysis (NKJP) of 203 noun-with-color-adjective constructions and their AN/NA distributions. These constructions were classified based on the color adjective’s function (qualifying, classificatory, or part of an idiom). The results show that, regardless of its respective function, Polish color adjectives typically tend to appear in the AN order.
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Valera, Salvador, and Alfonso Rizo Rodriguez. "A LOB-Corpus-based Semantic Profile of the Adjective in English Supplementive Clauses." International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 3, no. 2 (1998): 251–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.3.2.05val.
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One of the various forms that the expression of attribution may take in English is through a supplementive clause, a reduced structure realized by an adjective phrase hypotactically connected with a superordinate clause. The construction under study exhibits an attributive character in that the adjective predicates about the NP subject, but also possesses an adverbial import in so far as it expresses diverse circumstances relating to the main clause. This kind of structure is, however, not entirely free of constraints; in fact, not every adjective may combine with a matrix verb, and certain semantic patterns can be observed to occur recurrently in these constructions. This paper surveys a substantial number of adjectives from the LOB corpus for the identification of the semantic profile proper to supplementive adjectives.
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Åfarli, Tor A., and Øystein A. Vangsnes. "Formell og semantisk adjektivkongruens i norsk." Oslo Studies in Language 11, no. 2 (2021): 527–40. http://dx.doi.org/10.5617/osla.8516.
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This article provides an empirically based overview and discussion of types of adjectival agreement in attributive and predicative posisitions in Norwegian. In particular, we focus on two empirical facts that are quite striking: 1) With semantic agreement in predicative position, there are apparently no formal agreement features in the predication subject that trigger agreement on the predicative adjective; 2) Even though there is not alway formal agreement betwen the predication subject and a predicative adjective, there is always strict formal agreement between the head noun and an attributive adjective.
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FLEISCHHAUER, JENS, and MOZHGAN NEISANI. "Adverbial and attributive modification of Persian separable light verb constructions." Journal of Linguistics 56, no. 1 (2019): 45–85. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0022226718000646.
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Persian makes extensive use of light verb constructions (LVCs) consisting of a non-verbal preverb and a semantically light verbal element. The current paper concentrates on LVCs with nominal preverbs (e.g. sedâ dâdan ‘produce a sound’, lit. ‘sound give’) which license an attributively used adjective intervening between the two components of the construction. Such LVCs are idiomatically combining expressions, in the sense of Nunberg, Sag & Wasow (1994: 496). The individual components of idiomatically combining expressions have an identifiable meaning and combine in a non-arbitrary way. Thus, they are conceived as being formed compositionally. Evidence for this view can be taken from the fact that the attributively used adjectives function as internal modifiers, targeting only the nominal component of the LVC.As adjectives can also be used adverbially, two modification patterns emerge: The nominal preverb is modified by an attributive modifier, or the same adjective can be used as an adverbial modifier of the whole LVC. Two corresponding interpretation patterns arise: Attributive and adverbial modification either both result in the same, or in different interpretations.The paper makes the following claims: First, only compositionally derived LVCs license attributive modification of their nominal preverb; and second, different interpretations of the two modification patterns only result if the light verb and the preverb each license a suitable property as a target for the modifier. If, on the other hand, such a property is only licensed by the preverb, adverbial and attributive modification result in the same interpretation.
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TRIBUSHININA, ELENA, and WILLEM M. MAK. "Three-year-olds can predict a noun based on an attributive adjective: evidence from eye-tracking." Journal of Child Language 43, no. 2 (2015): 425–41. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0305000915000173.
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ABSTRACTThis paper investigates whether three-year-olds are able to process attributive adjectives (e.g., softpillow) as they hear them and to predict the noun (pillow) on the basis of the adjective meaning (soft). This was investigated in an experiment by means of the Visual World Paradigm. The participants saw two pictures (e.g., a pillow and a book) and heard adjective–noun combinations, where the adjective was either informative (e.g., soft) or uninformative (e.g., new) about the head-noun. The properties described by the target adjectives were not visually apparent. When the adjective was uninformative, the looks at the target increased only upon hearing the noun. When the adjective was informative, however, the looks at the target increased upon hearing the adjective. Three-year-olds were as fast as adult controls in predicting the upcoming noun. We conclude that toddlers process adjective–noun phrases incrementally and can predict the noun based on the prenominal adjective.
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Talić, Aida. "Adverb extraction, specificity, and structural parallelism." Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique 60, no. 3 (2015): 417–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s000841310002627x.
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AbstractThis paper investigates adverb extraction out of traditional adjective phrases (TAPs) like “extremely expensive”, in a number of Slavic, Romance, and Germanic languages, and establishes two novel generalizations regarding such extraction out of predicative and attributive TAPs, also showing what the (un)availability of such extraction reveals about the structure of TAPs cross-linguistically and in different constructions in a single language. I argue that attributive TAPs are never bare APs in languages that use only one adjectival form attributively. Languages that use two adjectival forms in the attributive position allow adverb extraction out of predicative and attributive TAPs, which indicates that adverb extraction is possible only if a bare AP is used in this position. More generally, I argue that extended projections of different lexical categories tend to be uniform within a language with respect to how much structure they project.
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BYBEE, JOAN, and RICARDO NAPOLEÃO DE SOUZA. "Vowel duration in English adjectives in attributive and predicative constructions." Language and Cognition 11, no. 4 (2019): 555–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/langcog.2019.32.
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abstractUsing ten English adjectives, this study tests the hypothesis that the vowels in adjectives in predicative constructions are longer than those in attributive constructions in spoken conversation. The analyses considered a number of factors: occurrence before a pause, lexical adjective, vowel identity, probability given surrounding words, and others. Two sets of statistical techniques were used: a Mixed-effects model and the Random Forest Analysis based on Conditional Inference Trees (CIT). Both analyses showed strong effects of predicative vs. attributive constructions and individual lexical adjectives on vowel duration in the predicted direction, as well as effects of many of the phonological variables tested. The results showed that the longer duration in the predicative construction is not due to lengthening before a pause, though it is related to whether the adjective is internal or final in the predicative construction. Nor is the effect attributable solely to the probability of the occurrence of the adjective; rather construction type has to be taken into account. The two statistical techniques complement each other, with the Mixed-effects model showing very general trends over all the data, and the Random Forest / CIT analysis showing factors that affect only subsets of the data.
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Thompson, Sandra A., and Hongyin Tao. "Conversation, grammar, and fixedness." Chinese Language and Discourse 1, no. 1 (2010): 3–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/cld.1.1.01tho.
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The categoriality of ‘adjectives’ has been a favorite topic of discussion in functional Chinese linguistics. However, the literature leaves us with no clear picture of the ‘adjective’ category for Mandarin. In this paper, we take a usage-based approach to revisit the issue of adjectives in Mandarin. Our investigation of a corpus of face-to-face conversations shows that conversational Mandarin favors Predicate Adjectives over Attributive Adjectives. This pattern is explained by two facts: people primarily use Predicate Adjectives in conversation to assess the world around them, and these assessments (including reactive tokens) are a primary way for people to negotiate stance, alignment, and perspective, while Attributive Adjectives are used to introduce new participants into the discourse, which is a less prominent function in everyday conversation. We also argue that whether predicative or attributive, an understanding of adjectives in everyday Mandarin talk involves various facets of fixedness. This is substantiated by the fact that predicate vs. attributive positions attract different types of adjectives, kinds of collocation patterns, kinds of constructions, and pathways to lexicalization. Thus, this paper demonstrates that (1) interactional data can tell us much about the ‘psychological reality’ of the category ‘adjective’ for speakers; and (2) frequency and ongoing prefab creation are crucial to characterizing the categoriality and mental representation of ‘adjectives’ in Mandarin.
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Lin, Jo-wang. "The adjective of quantity duo ‘many/much’ and differential comparatives in Mandarin Chinese." International Journal of Chinese Linguistics 1, no. 2 (2014): 163–91. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/ijchl.1.2.01lin.
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This article discusses differential comparatives involving the adjective of quantity duo ‘many/much’ in Mandarin Chinese. We show that the obligatory construal of a post-adjectival duo-phrase as a differential phrase rather than a degree modifier is due to the interaction of four factors: (i) gradable adjectives denote measure functions rather than relations between degrees and individuals, (ii) post-adjectival duo-phrases are generalized quantifiers over degrees, (iii) the null positive degree morpheme is an independent functional head that takes AP as its complement and (iv) the null differential comparative morpheme is an affixal element adjoined to the adjective. In addition, this article also shows that the quantificational/attributive, predicative and differential duo can all be unified under the same semantics by analyzing duo as a function from degrees to sets of degrees, thus lending support to Solt’s (2014) analysis of adjectives of quantity.
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Grashchenkov, P., and O. Kurianova. "The order of attributive adjectives in the history of Russian and the position of adjectives in the noun phrase." Rhema, no. 4, 2018 (2018): 72–108. http://dx.doi.org/10.31862/2500-2953-2018-4-72-108.
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The paper discusses ordering of different semantic classes of attributive adjectives and possible implications for the syntactic hierarchy based of the (non-)observed linearization. Two corpus-driven studies are presented: the first one considers Russian, the second one deals with the complex corpus, consisting of Old Church Slavonic and Old Russian texts from XI to XVII centuries. Although quantitative analysis shows the tendency towards ordering of attributive adjective, this tendency is not strong and regular enough. The paper concludes that attributive adjectives can be hardly viewed as representing syntactically ordered functional structure and soon argue in favor of attributive adjunction.
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Blom, Elma, Daniela Polišenská, and Fred Weerman. "Articles, adjectives and age of onset: the acquisition of Dutch grammatical gender." Second Language Research 24, no. 3 (2008): 297–331. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0267658308090183.
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A comparison of the error profiles of monolingual (child L1) learners of Dutch, Moroccan children (child L2) and Moroccan adults (adult L2) learning Dutch as their L2 shows that participants in all groups massively overgeneralize [—neuter] articles to [+neuter] contexts. In all groups, the reverse gender mistake infrequently occurs. Gender expressed by Dutch attributive adjectives reveals an age-related asymmetry between the three groups, however. Whereas participants in the child groups overgeneralize one particular suffix (namely the schwa), adult participants use both adjectival forms, the schwa-adjective and the bare adjective, incorrectly. It is argued that the asymmetry observed in adjectives reflects that adult learners exploit an input-based, lexical learning route, whereas children rely on grammar-based representations. The similarity in article selection between all groups follows from the assumption that adults, like children, make use of lexical frames. Crucially, lexical frames can successfully describe the distribution of gender-marked articles, but they cannot account for gender in adjectives.
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Dube, Progress. "The attributive adjective in Zimbabwean isiNdebele." South African Journal of African Languages 41, no. 2 (2021): 139–48. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02572117.2021.1948213.
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Chumakina, M. "Attributive in Archi." Rhema, no. 4, 2018 (2018): 166–89. http://dx.doi.org/10.31862/2500-2953-2018-4-166-189.
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In this paper I discuss attributive in Archi (Nakh-Daghestanian). Archi lacks an independent category of adjective and uses attributives instead. Attributives in Archi belong to a transpositional mixed category that can be formed from any of the four main parts of speech: nouns, verbs, ad verbs and postpositions. Based on a detailed analysis of their syntactic and morphological properties, I demonstrated that Archi attributives retain some of the morphosyntactic characteristics of their base category, whilst simultaneously having morphological and syntactic character-istics shared across transposed forms. At the same time, it can be shown that Archi attributives have a unique distribution and agreement pattern that is clearly distinct from any other lexical class. All these make Archi attributive simultaneously possess both morphological and syntactic characteristics of two syntactic categories.
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Evans, Elliott. "Meta-Tatian." Indogermanische Forschungen 125, no. 1 (2020): 105–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/if-2020-007.
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AbstractIn addition to inflecting adjectives for case, number, and gender, the early Germanic languages inflect adjectives as either strong or weak. Scholarly consensus is lacking regarding what triggers this fourth inflectional category, i.e. why an adjective surfaces as either strong or weak. While the traditional school of thought held that weak adjectives surface with definite determiners, some recent scholarship has argued that a semantic force such as definiteness or classification is responsible. To evaluate the two positions, I compared attributive adjectives in the Old High German translation of Tatian’s Diatessaron with the corresponding passages in Gothic and Old English. The conclusion supports the traditional school of thought that determiners trigger weak adjectives and refutes the idea that semantics is primarily responsible for whether an adjective surfaces as strong or weak.
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Goes, Jan. "The adjective: an eminently syncategorematic part of speech." Kalbotyra 74 (September 15, 2021): 72–87. http://dx.doi.org/10.15388/kalbotyra.2021.74.4.
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In this article we propose an alternative to the theories which subdivide the adjective into three major types (qualifier, relational, adjective of the third type), themselves subdivided into several subclasses. We believe instead that there is only one adjectival lexeme with different uses (unitary hypothesis). To do this, we start from the two ways of looking for the adjectival prototype: on the one hand, the abstract prototype built by accumulating criteria, on the other, the semantic prototype. We examine the behavior of occurrences of the abstract prototype (admirable, monumental) and the semantic prototype (grand) with respect to gradation, the attributive function (more specifically the place of the adjective) and the predicative function. The examples show not only that the two prototype models can be reconciled, but above all that the behavior and the meaning of any adjective depend in large part on the noun it qualifies, a result which confirms our unitary hypothesis. The syntactic-semantic dependence of the adjective on the supporting substantive is such that it can be concluded that the adjective is a syncategorematic part of speech, rather than a polysemous one.
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Klinge, Alex. "The role of configurational morphology in Germanic nominal structure and the case of English noun-noun constellations." Word Structure 2, no. 2 (2009): 155–83. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/e1750124509000397.
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This paper argues that a number of puzzling issues in the analysis of English nominal structure arise because English has lost the obligatory pre-N attributive morphology which is still present in the other Germanic languages, represented in this paper by German and Danish. The morphology which the other Germanic languages assign in this particular configuration ensures a clear-cut formal distinction between compounds and phrases, and it upholds a one-to-one relationship between pre-N attributive distribution and the word-class of adjectives. English lost the morphology in this particular configuration, so English also lost the clear-cut formal distinction between compounds and phrases, turning the distinction instead into a semantic one, and it opened up the pre-N attributive slot to constituent classes other than adjectives and adjective phrases. Understanding the role of pre-N attributive morphology in the nominal structure of Germanic languages opens up new ways of understanding the puzzles of English. This paper reviews some known puzzles in the light of the role of pre-N attributive morphology; and it makes new observations and proposes new explanations of structural facts across English, German and Danish.
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Rosen, Bryan. "On Attributive Adjectives in Ojibwe and Cinque’s Phrasal Movement Analysis of Adjective Orders." Linguistic Inquiry 47, no. 1 (2016): 158–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/ling_a_00208.
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Novikova, Daria, and Yulia Ivanova. "Semantics and Modality of “Strange” (Based on Mystical-Fantastic Russian, English and Spanish Novels)." SHS Web of Conferences 50 (2018): 01119. http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/shsconf/20185001119.
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The aim of the study is to present semantic diversity of an adjective “strange” in Russian, English and Spanish literary texts. All context examples are taken from world-known mystical-fantastic novels (“Altist Danilov” by V. Orlov, “Falling Angel” by W. Hjortsberg, and “The Club Dumas” by A. Pérez-Reverte) in order to demonstrate individual author’s style in conveying religious concept such as demon and its attributes through different cultures. Using the method of comparative analysis and specific identification the authors describe three aspects of adjective definition – gnoseological, emotional-axiological and orthological. The paper confirms that attributive features of main characters in all literary texts can be depicted through one single adjective, its synonyms and its collocations. Moreover, description of demonic personages mostly depends on quality adjectives having selected by a creator of a literary text. The practical value of the study is that research findings can be used in future investigations on the modality and semantics of other adjectives belonging to the same semantic group.
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Bylinina, Lisa. "Degree Infinitival Clauses." Semantics and Linguistic Theory 23 (August 24, 2013): 394. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/salt.v23i0.2660.
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I discuss the structure and semantic composition of the so-called "Attributive-with-Infinitive" construction -- a construction that contains a positive gradable adjective in the attributive position, and a gapped infinitival clause. Studying the way the adjective combines with the infinitival clause will suggest a new type of an infinitival clause -- a degree interval-denoting one. The analysis will have consequences for the nature of a positive morpheme.
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Berg, Thomas. "How nominal compounds are modified by two adjectives." Folia Linguistica 48, no. 1 (2014): 1–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/flin.2014.001.
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Abstract Basing itself on a corpus of one thousand complex NPs, this study investigates the relationships that two attributive adjectives contract with the constituents of nominal compounds of varying size in English (e.g. new basic safety standards). Essentially, there are four logically possible relationships: (i) both adjectives modify the nominal head, (ii) both adjectives modify the nominal modifier, (iii) the first adjective modifies the head and the second adjective the modifier and (iv) the first adjective modifies the modifier and the second adjective the head (crossed modification). While options (i) and (iii) are strongly represented in the data, crossed modification is not at all present. Across all compound sizes, at least three factors shape the empirical patterns: a functional factor whereby major heads are more easily singled out than minor heads, which in turn are more available than modifiers; a structural factor whereby more deeply embedded constituents are less available than more independent constituents; and a proximity effect which encourages the modification of the first noun by the second adjective. There may be an additional saturation effect which discourages the modification of one noun by two adjectives. On the face of it, the non-occurrence of crossed modification may be connected to the well-known ban on crossing association lines. However, despite its descriptive adequacy, this principle is unconvincing. Instead, a functional explanation is proposed which centres on the possibility of working out modification relationships. Initial steps are taken towards developing a model of when (and why) the no-crossing constraint is inviolable, violable or non-existent
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SPENCER, ANDREW. "What's in a compound?" Journal of Linguistics 47, no. 2 (2011): 481–507. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0022226710000411.
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The Oxford Handbook of Compoundingsurveys a variety of theoretical and descriptive issues, presenting overviews of compounding in a number of frameworks and sketches of compounding in a number of languages. Much of the book deals with Germanic noun–noun compounding. I take up some of the theoretical questions raised surrounding such constructions, in particular, the notion of attributive modification in noun-headed compounds. I focus on two issues. The first is the semantic relation between the head noun and its nominal modifier. Several authors repeat the argument that there is a small(-ish) fixed number of general semantic relations in noun–noun compounds (‘Lees's solution’), but I argue that the correct way to look at such compounds is what I call ‘Downing's solution’, in which we assume that the relation is specified pragmatically, and hence could be any relation at all. The second issue is the way that adjectives modify nouns inside compounds. Although there are languages in which compounded adjectives modify just as they do in phrases (Chukchee, Arleplog Swedish), in general the adjective has a classifier role and not that of a compositional attributive modifier. Thus, even if an English (or German) adjective–noun compound looks compositional, it isn't.
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Bidese, Ermenegildo, Andrea Padovan, and Claudia Turolla. "Adjective orders in Cimbrian DPs." Linguistics 57, no. 2 (2019): 373–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/ling-2019-0004.
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AbstractIn this work we aim to give a first description of the morphosyntactic behavior of some adjectives in the Cimbrian of Luserna. This Germanic variety allows a subclass of adjectives to appear in post-nominal position. This aspect seems to be relevant, since neither colloquial Standard German nor any other German substandard variety spoken in German-speaking areas display a similar pattern. Along the lines of Cinque (2010, 2014), we argue that Cimbrian, with respect to the adnominal adjectival order, has maintained the Germanic pattern of Merge, but permits in some cases NP-Movement above the (“bare” AP reduced) relative clause projection. The fact that adjectives following the head noun are predicative rather than attributive is supported by the fact that post-nominal modifiers never show up with inflection.
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Ninio, Anat. "Complement or adjunct? The syntactic principle English-speaking children learn when producing determiner–noun combinations in their early speech." First Language 39, no. 1 (2017): 33–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0142723717729276.
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In children acquiring various languages, the early mastery of determiners strongly predicts syntactic development. What makes determiners important is not yet clear as there is a linguistic controversy regarding their syntactic behaviour. Some consider determiners to be similar to adjectives and to modify common nouns, while others consider the common nouns their complements. This article aims to find out which of the two basic syntactic operations, complementation or adjunct attribution, children learn when they master determiner–noun combinations in their early speech. Pearson correlations of determiner–nominal combinations with verb–noun combinations and attributive adjective–noun combinations were computed in early two-word-long sentences of a large sample of young English-speaking children. Determiner–nominal combinations were very highly correlated with verb–noun sentences, whereas the correlation with adjective–noun combinations was much lower. It appears that determiner–noun combinations are a type of complementation. When children learn them early, they apparently learn the syntactic principle underlying such combinations which then can be transferred to other syntactic constructions.
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NINIO, ANAT. "Young children's difficulty with adjectives modifying nouns." Journal of Child Language 31, no. 2 (2004): 255–85. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0305000904006191.
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In two experiments we tested the hypothesis that children have a basic problem in mastering the attributive relation because it involves a two-step logical–semantic integration process of the head-noun and the attributive adjective. Hebrew-speaking children were asked to interpret highly familiar adjective–noun combinations by selecting a photo that depicted the correct referent. In Experiment 1 there were four choices for each adjective–noun pair: correct object/correct property, correct object/wrong property, wrong object/correct property, wrong object/wrong property. 170 children (1;6–4;4) participated. Analyses of errors and spontaneous self-corrections indicated that children initially ignored the adjective and based their responses only on the noun. In Experiment 2, in addition to the 4-choice condition, there were two simpler conditions with only two choices: the correct object/correct property, and either the correct object/wrong property, or the wrong object/correct property. 30 children (1;9–4;11) were tested. The children, and in particular the lowest-scoring third of the sample, did significantly better in the 2-pictures conditions. The results suggest that young children do possess a basic adjective vocabulary and can use it in simple discriminations, but have a considerable difficulty in integrating the information furnished by the adjective with information furnished by the noun.
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Halevy, Rivka. "The ‘swift of foot’ construction and the phrase structure of the adjectival construct in Hebrew." Studies in Language 40, no. 2 (2016): 380–414. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/sl.40.2.04hal.
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This article sheds new light on the puzzling phrase structure of complex adjectival phrases which are common in Semitic, specifically in Hebrew, and which are equivalent to Indo-European phrases such as ‘swift of foot.’ The article draws a clear distinction between these constructions and adjectival compounds such as ‘swift-footed’, which are prevalent in major Indo-European languages but are absent from Semitic languages. The Hebrew construction under discussion is a genitival construct consisting of an adjective followed by a modifying noun in genitive status. The adjective is the head of the construction, but agrees in number and gender with a noun outside the construction. This construction has invited controversial analyses by different scholars, most recently in the framework of generative grammar. The present study construction is anchored in the framework of Construction Grammar. It nevertheless advances a morphosyntactic and semantic analysis of its inner composition. Functional aspects and the speaker’s perspectival choice in construing such attributive phrases are taken into account as well.
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FLEISHER, NICHOLAS. "Attributive adjectives, infinitival relatives, and the semantics of inappropriateness." Journal of Linguistics 47, no. 2 (2011): 341–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0022226710000393.
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I investigate the syntax and semantics of a previously unexamined English adjective construction, exemplified by sentences like Middlemarch is a long book to assign. The construction, which I call the nominal attributive-with-infinitive construction (nominal AIC), is of interest for the semantics of gradability and modality. I argue that the major interpretive characteristic of the nominal AIC – the interpretation of inappropriateness associated with it – arises from the interaction between the positive degree operator associated with the gradable adjective and the modality of the infinitival relative clause, which contributes to the computation of the standard of comparison. Nominal AICs are compared and contrasted with a surface-identical construction I call the clausal AIC, with attributive too, and with attributive comparatives; they are shown to exhibit major syntactic and semantic differences from all of these. The paper serves both as a contribution to the semantic literature on gradability and as a contribution to the descriptive grammar of English, as it is, to the best of my knowledge, the first systematic description and analysis of the nominal AIC.
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Balam, Osmer, and María del Carmen Parafita Couto. "Adjectives in Spanish/English code-switching." Spanish in Context 16, no. 2 (2019): 194–216. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/sic.00034.bal.
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Abstract The current study investigates DP-internal adjectives in Spanish/English code-switching (CS). Specifically, we analyze two concomitant phenomena that have been previously investigated; namely, the distributional frequency and placement of adjectives in mixed determiner phrases (DPs). A total of 1680 DPs (477 monolingual Spanish and 1203 Spanish/English DPs), extracted from sociolinguistic interviews with 62 consultants from Northern Belize, were quantitatively examined. This paper is the first of its kind to examine adjectives in the innovative Spanish/English CS variety of Northern Belize, an understudied context where bilingual CS has thrived among younger generations. The distributional and statistical analyses revealed that the avoidance of Spanish attributive adjectives and overt gender marking is a distinguishing characteristic of mixed DPs but not monolingual Spanish DPs, a finding that supports Otheguy and Lapidus’ (2003) adaptive simplification hypothesis. In terms of adjective placement, both the Matrix Language Frame model and the Minimalist approach to CS were able to account for mixed noun-adjective DPs, with the exception of a few cases that could only be predicted by the former model. The present analysis highlights the pivotal role that simplification and convergence play in code-switchers’ optimization of linguistic resources in bi/multilingual discourse.
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Speelman, Dirk, José Tummers, and Dirk Geeraerts. "Lexical patterning in a construction grammar." Constructions and Frames 1, no. 1 (2009): 87–118. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/cf.1.1.05spe.
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This paper compares two measures that quantify lexical preference patterns in the area of Construction Grammar, namely, collostructions and (construction-internal) collocations (as conceived by Stefan Th. Gries and Anatol Stefanowitsch). Starting from a case study, inflectional variation in Dutch attributive adjectives, two diagnostic calculations will be set up to analyse to what extent both association measures identify lexical preferences in this construction. In particular, the lexical patterns yielded by the collostructional and the collocational association measures will be evaluated as a factor which determines the selection of the inflectional alternatives of the Dutch attributive adjective. We will argue that, at least in some cases, constructions are more strongly characterised by the (construction-internal) collocations that instantiate them than by the single items that instantiate them (as defined in collostructions). Consequently, the syntagmatic axis should become a constitutive dimension in a comprehensive Construction Grammar model.
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Dirven, René. "The cognitive motivation for adjective sequences in attribution." Journal of English Studies 1 (May 29, 1999): 57. http://dx.doi.org/10.18172/jes.42.
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Adjective sequences in attributive position tend to follow a fairly rigorous order, which was already observed in several structuralist approaches. Thanks to the insights of case grammar, iconicity studies and cognitive linguistics, these adjective sequences can now also be given a semantic, i.e. a conceptual basis. Adjective types that imply some semantic role such as agent, instrument, source, are conceptually and hence also syntactically in close proximity to the noun they modify. Next in proximity are the more “objective” adjective types denoting properties such as size, shape, age and colour. The internal sequence of these four properties can be explained by the principle of saliency, which is supported by observations in language acquisition and language typology research. More “subjective” qualifications such as nice, splendid, wonderful are least inherent to any entity denoted by the noun and consequently, iconically speaking, at the greatest distance from it.
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Glahn, Esther, Gisela Håkansson, Björn Hammarberg, Anne Holmen, Anne Hvenekilde, and Karen Lund. "PROCESSABILITY IN SCANDINAVIAN SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION." Studies in Second Language Acquisition 23, no. 3 (2001): 389–416. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0272263101003047.
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This paper reports on a test of the validity of Pienemann's (1998) Processability Theory (PT). This theory predicts that certain morphological and syntactic phenomena are acquired in a fixed sequence. Three phenomena were chosen for this study: attributive adjective morphology, predicative adjective morphology, and subordinate clause syntax (placement of negation). These phenomena are located at successive developmental stages in the hierarchy predicted by PT. We test whether they actually do appear in this predicted hierarchical order in the L2 of Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish learners. The three languages mentioned are very closely related and have the same adjective morphology and subordinate clause syntax. We can, therefore, treat them as one language for the purposes of this study. Three analyses have been carried out: The first follows Pienemann's theory and is concerned only with syntactic levels; the second is a semantic analysis of the acquisition of number versus that of gender; the third analysis studies the various kinds of mismatches between the inflection of the noun, the controller, and the adjective. The results are the following: The first test supports PT as it has been described by Pienemann. The second analysis shows that there is an acquisitional hierarchy such that number is acquired before gender (in adjectives), and the mismatch analysis raises questions about the fundamental assumptions of the theory.
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Kotowski, Sven, and Holden Härtl. "How real are adjective order constraints? Multiple prenominal adjectives at the grammatical interfaces." Linguistics 57, no. 2 (2019): 395–427. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/ling-2019-0005.
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AbstractAdjective order restrictions on attributive adjectives (AORs) have been subject to debate in modern linguistic research for a long time. Most generally, the question whether AORs can be located in grammar as such in rule-based fashion is still unsettled. In the current paper, we largely argue against this view and claim that several of the core data to be explained are preferences based on norms rather than rules. A pragmatic explanation is offered to account for marked or apparently ungrammatical examples. First, we demarcate AORs in the narrow sense against data based on truth-conditional differences, show the sole hard constraint to be found in a distinction between object- and kind-modification, and introduce several of the factors argued to drive AORs in the literature. A large-scale corpus study on German AAN-phrases shows a hierarchy of relative adjectives preceding absolute ones to reliably predict preferences, while temporariness and weight do not. We then illustrate that norm-based preferences can be overwritten via discourse linking and implement markedness in out-of-the-blue contexts pragmatically based on the M-principle. Speculating that AORs in the narrow sense have their origins in more general cognitive principles, our findings support approaches that locate the better part of AORs outside the realm of core grammar.
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Zwart, C. Jan-Wouter. "Easy to (re)analyse." Linguistics in the Netherlands 29 (November 2, 2012): 147–58. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/avt.29.12zwa.
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Within minimalism, we may assume derivations to involve subderivations, connected by the interface components dealing with sound and meaning (layered derivations). If so, complex adjectival constructions involving predicates like tough/easy (as in John is easy to please) receive a natural account in terms of reanalysis taking place at these interface components, turning a complex adjectival construction into a simplex adjective which can be merged in predicative or attributive position in the next derivation layer. Arguments against reanalysis address earlier, more complicated conceptions of reanalysis, and fail to distinguish plain and expanded tough-constructions, the latter not showing any reanalysis characteristics. In a layered-derivation cum reanalysis approach, the arguments for empty operator movement in the embedded infinitival clause disappear, and the reanalysed construction shows the properties of an adjectival passive instead.
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Kim, Jeong-hoon. "The study on Relationships between Attributive Word and Noun, Adjective, Adverb." JOURNAL OF CHINESE HUMANITIES 64 (December 31, 2016): 173–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.35955/jch.2016.12.64.173.
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Torres, Rosa María Rojas. "La categoría ‘adjetivo’ en elArte del idioma zapoteco(1578) y elVocabulario en lengua çapoteca(1578) de Juan de Córdova." Historiographia Linguistica International Journal for the History of the Language Sciences 36, no. 2-3 (2009): 259–79. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/hl.36.2-3.05roj.
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This article offers a treatment of the linguistic category ‘adjective’ that appears in two colonial sources, both written by Fray Juan de Córdova, O.P. in 1578: theArte del idioma zapotecoand theVocabulario en lengua çapoteca. Juan de Córdova was a Dominican friar, born in Córdoba, Spain in probably 1501. In 1543, Juan de Córdova was ordained at the Convento Imperial de México and later was sent to the Dominican Monastery of Oaxaca. He served as Province Minister for two years — from 1568 to 1570 — and later he continued to be a missionary among the Zapotec, when he wrote his great work on their language. Toward the end of his life, Juan de Córdova returned to Oaxaca and died in the Dominican Monastery of Old Antequera in 1595. Based on the description of the category of the adjective, as proposed by Córdova and the analysis of the language as is currently spoken, particularly in the area of Santa Ana del Valle, Oaxaca, the author will show that the grammatical class proposed by Córdova was not actually formed as such during the period he describes. It will be shown, based on the analysis of two colonial texts — thetestamentosby Gabriel Luis (1610) and Juan López (1618) — that the words that Cordova calls adjectives not only occur with very low-frequency but, more crucially, their categorization as adjectives has been due to their role in the Spanish translations more than to their grammatical characteristics. These two testaments had been compiled, with other testaments and documents of several kinds, namely as documents in a legal suit concerning a site named Gueguecahui. It is relevant to mention that testaments are not very reliable kind of document for a syntactic analysis of the language, since they have a very rigid structure that apparently mimics the schema used in testaments written in Spanish. Nevertheless, they can show that the attributive modification function is seldom used, and the cases found do not support that these expressions really pertain to the syntactic category of adjectives. Furthermore, the analysis of adjectives as currently used in the Zapotec of Santa Ana del Valle shows that, more often than not, they do not correspond to adjectives but indeed verbs in Cordova’sVocabulario. This affirmation is based on a comparative analysis of some adjectives in modern Zapotec of Santa Ana del Valle with related words given adjectival meanings in Cordova´sVocabulario. In conclusion there is not enough evidence of the existence of adjective category in 16th-century Zapotec.
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Velnic, Marta. "Of good thieves and old friends: An analysis of Croatian adjectival forms." Poljarnyj vestnik 18 (October 13, 2015): 18. http://dx.doi.org/10.7557/6.3455.
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Croatian adjectives have two forms in the masculine gender: the Long (L) form and the Short (S) form. The main distributional difference is that the Short adjective can be in predicative position and the Long one cannot, while both can be in attributive position. This difference between attributive and predicative can be related to a variety of other cross-linguistic distributions concerning adjectives (Alexiadou 2001). It has been stated (Aljović 2002, Trenkić 2004) for (Serbo-)Croatian that the two forms mark a distinction in definiteness or specificity with the long one being [+DEF/+SPEC] and the Short one [-DEF/-SPEC]. A survey on 32 adults was conducted in order to obtain more information about the distribution of the two forms in general; to find out whether it is definiteness or specificity that is being marked by the Long form; and to check whether one of the forms (the Long one) can function as a subject of a sentence in the absence of a noun. The results of the statistical analysis show that the predicative/attributive distinction is not as strict as described in the previous literature (Silić and Pranjković 2007); and that the Long form is related to specificity but does not express it. I propose an analysis that builds on cross-linguistic parallelisms described in Alexiadou 2001 and I propose that Croatian Long and Short distributional patterns are caused by the same factors as Noun Raising in Romance and Determiner Spreading in Greek, even though we find that this is not as strict as in those languages. However, it is only with expanding our cross-linguistic analysis to more languages that we can fully understand the nature of what these subtle differences of adjectives mark.
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Osborne, Timothy. "Adjectives as roots of nominal groups: the big mess construction in dependency grammar." Folia Linguistica 55, no. 1 (2021): 231–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/flin-2021-2075.
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Abstract The so-called ‘Big Mess Construction’ (BMC) frustrates standard assumptions about the structure of nominal groups. The normal position of an attributive adjective is after the determiner and before the noun, but in the BMC, the adjective precedes the determiner, e.g. that strange a sound, so big a scandal, too lame an excuse. Previous accounts of the BMC are couched in ‘Phrase Structure Grammar’ (PSG) and view the noun or the determiner (or the preposition of) as the root/head of the BMC phrase. In contrast, the current approach, which is couched in a ‘Dependency Grammar’ (DG) model, argues that the adjective is in fact the root/head of the phrase. A number of insights point to the adjective as the root/head, the most important of which is the optional appearance of the preposition of, e.g. that strange of a sound, so big of a scandal, too lame of an excuse.
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LaPolla, Randy J., and Chenglong Huang. "The Copula and Existential Verbs in Qiang." Bulletin of Chinese Linguistics 2, no. 1 (2007): 233–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2405478x-90000032.
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This paper discusses the copula and existential verb constructions in Qiang, a Tibeto-Burman language of northern Sichuan, China. There is only one copula verb in Qiang, which can be used in equational, identificational, attributive, naming, and cleft constructions, as well as one type of possessive construction. There are five existential verbs in Qiang, the use of which depends on the semantics of the referent being predicated as existing and its location. The existential verbs have a number of the characteristics of adjective-like stative verbs, and can be modified by adverbs of degree, but they cannot directly modify nouns. Also, the meaning of reduplication of existential verbs is different from that of adjective-like stative verbs: reduplication of existential verbs results in transitivization, while reduplication of adjective-like stative verbs results in emphasis of degree.
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Cohen, Eran. "Adjectival ša syntagms and adjectives in Old Babylonian." Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 71, no. 1 (2008): 25–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0041977x08000025.
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AbstractThis paper describes attribution in Old Babylonian. The principles drawn upon are the traditional view of Akkadian syntax, modern Semitic syntax, and the principles of European structuralism. Bringing all these together, while exemplifying and proving previous unexplained statements by using Old Babylonian material, renders the whole issue tangible for every linguistically-oriented reader. ša syntagms are described, each component separately, as a pronominal construct nucleus with an attribute; this attribute is either a nominal or a clause. ša syntagms, being appositive to a referent substantive (when occurring), are in the same paradigm with adjectives, which are shown to have the same components as ša syntagms: a pronominal nucleus, an attribute and the attributive link between them.
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Pijarnsarid, Sukontip, and Prommintra Kongkaew. "AN ANALYSIS OF THE CONTENT WORDS USED IN A SCHOOL TEXTBOOK, TEAM UP ENGLISH 3, USED FOR GRADE 9 STUDENTS." International Journal of Research -GRANTHAALAYAH 5, no. 3 (2017): 140–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.29121/granthaalayah.v5.i3.2017.1761.
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The purpose of this study were to study the content words used in a school textbook, Team Up in English 3, used for Grade 9 students and to study the frequency of content words used in a school textbook, Team Up in English 3, used for Grade 9 students. The study found that nouns is used with the highest frequency (79), followed by verb (58), adjective (46), and adverb (24).With the nouns analyzed, it was found that the Modifiers + N used with the highest frequency (92.40%), the compound nouns were ranked in second (7.59 %). Considering the verbs used in the text, it was found that transitive verbs were most commonly used (77.58%), followed by intransitive verbs (12.06%), linking verbs (10.34%). As regards the adjectives used in the text, there were 46 adjectives in total, 30 adjectives were used as attributive (65.21 %) and 16 adjectives were used as predicative (34.78%). As for the adverbs, it was found that adverbs of times were used with the highest frequency (37.5 % ), followed by the adverbs of purpose and degree (33.33%) , the adverbs of frequency (12.5 %) , the adverbs of place ( 8.33% ) and the adverbs of manner ( 8.33 % ).
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남윤주, Upyong Hong, and Hyein Jeong. "Semantic integration between an attributive adjective and a noun in Korean sentence processing." Linguistic Research 31, no. 2 (2014): 381–402. http://dx.doi.org/10.17250/khisli.31.2.201408.007.
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Fox, Gwendoline. "Peut-on expliquer l’acquisition de l’alternance de l’adjectif en français à partir de l’input ?" Role of input on early first language morphosyntactic development 5, no. 1 (2014): 100–116. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/lia.5.1.05fox.
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This article proposes to study the acquisition of the placement of attributive adjectives by French-speaking children between the ages of 3;9 and 4;6. It examines the possibility to account for children’s uses and evolution on the basis of the model provided by the input, considering that there is a mismatch between speakers’ abstract knowledge of alternation and their behaviour in usage. The study consists of a comparison between the productions of three children at two points in their development, and the uses of their interlocutors, in situations of games. Results show that alternation appears late and develops slowly in children’s productions, suggesting a very long process of acquisition. They also indicate that children heavily rely on the input in their choices of placement, which influences how they come to master alternation. This supports a usage-based approach to the acquisition of word order and of the Adjective category.
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Nakajima, Takashi. "Heads and layers in agglutination: A case in deadjectival psych verbs with -garu in Japanese." Open Linguistics 7, no. 1 (2021): 42–65. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/opli-2021-0003.
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Abstract Using deadjectival psych verbs with -garu in Japanese, this study shows that agglutinative complex predicate formation is done by recursive application of Merge to roots and functional heads. This process creates a layered syntactic structure, with each layer providing the computational system with (i) specific semantic features, (ii) arguments, and (iii) phonetic form (PF) exponents at conceptual–intentional (CI)/sensory motor (SM) Interfaces. The whole amalgam of the root and the functional heads is interpreted as a “word” at PF. Following the general architecture of Distributed Morphology, I will show that the morpheme that derives deadjectival verbs -garu is underlyingly -k-ar-u (k-Copula-T), where k is “little” v that originates in the verbal root k-o “come” and ar- is a copula. They are now grammaticalized functional heads that extend adjectival roots. Crucially, this k is homophonous with “little” a, which makes -garu and the adjective-deriving morpheme -karu (k-Copula-T) parallel. k is voiced in -garu due to a structurally conditioned assimilation rule (Embick 2013). This analysis reveals the mechanisms of agglutinative predicate formation in a precise and detailed manner. Similarly, it gives natural solutions to some of the long-standing problems including how adjectives modify N such as utukusii dansaa “beautiful dancer,” which is ambiguous between attributive modification and a relative clause.
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Kochová, Pavla. "Ke Vztahu Slovotvorného, Potenciálního A Lexikálního Významu V Lexikografickém Popisu Desubstantivních Vztahových Adjektiv." Journal of Linguistics/Jazykovedný casopis 69, no. 3 (2018): 486–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/jazcas-2019-0025.
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Abstract The relationship between the wordformation meaning and the lexical meaning on the one hand and the relationship between potentiality and reality of the lexical meaning on the other hand belongs to the topics repeatedly dealt with by Klára Buzássyová. In her studies she also stated that the assessment of the wordformation meaning and the lexical meaning is a task for lexicographers (and a task of lexicographic treatment of the vocabulary). Denominal relational adjectives still represent a lexicographic challenge in terms of treating their (real) lexical meaning. Their wordformation meaning is general: ‘relating to the fact denoted by the motivating word’. Their lexical meaning is given by the relation to the motivating noun or the motivating multiword unit (the polysemantic structure of the motivating noun is thus indicated in the semantic structure of the adjective) and by the reference to the governing noun (collocability of relational adjectives as a consequence of their dominant use in the attributive position, i.e. in adjectivesubstantive combinations, is also expressed in their semantic structure). The lexical meaning of denominal relational adjectives is also influenced by the lexicalization process, e.g. by the accumulation of semantic elements on their systemic qualificative meaning (the characteristic property meaning and comparative meaning), leading sometimes to the total loss of connection with the motivating noun.
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Ramón, Noelia. "Comparing original and translated Spanish." Babel. Revue internationale de la traduction / International Journal of Translation 61, no. 4 (2015): 527–51. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/babel.61.4.05ram.
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It is a well-known fact that translated texts present a number of peculiarities which distinguish its language from the one found in texts produced originally. Many studies have tried to name some of these phenomena, which are usually grouped together under the umbrella term of ‘translation universals’. It has been demonstrated that translations do share a number of features irrespective of the source or target languages involved. Other divergences between original and translated texts are due to source language interference and are, therefore, language-dependent. This paper is a corpus-based study of several highly frequent Spanish adjectives in original texts and in texts translated from English. The unmarked position of attributive adjectives is the pre-modifying one in English and the post-modifying one in Spanish, though. Spanish also allows for the pre‑modifying position with certain connotations. The aim of this study is to identify differences in behavioral patterns with respect to adjective position in original and translated Spanish and explain these differences in terms of translation universals and/or source language interference. The results have revealed cases of simplification, unique item under-representation and untypical collocations in Spanish translations of English source texts.
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Sudaryat, Yayat. "PEMARKAH PERTARAFAN DALAM BAHASA SUNDA." Adabiyyāt: Jurnal Bahasa dan Sastra 12, no. 2 (2013): 263. http://dx.doi.org/10.14421/ajbs.2013.12203.
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Sundanese. It uses the descriptive method. The data were This research aims to describe the qualitative marker in collected with bibliographic study, intuitive technique, and elicitation technique. The sources of data are the spoken and written Sundanese and its variation. The data are analyzed with distributional method and immediate constituent analysis. The result shows that there are 32 the qualitative markers in Sundanese: two affixes and thirty qualitative adverbs. The result of this study consists of four qualitative markers. They are form, distribution, function, and meaning. The form of the qualitative marker consists of four word forms: the simple words, derivative words, reduplication words, and compound words. The distribution of the qualitative marker in adjective phrases consists of four word positions: pre-adjective, postadjective, pre-post-adjective, and mobile position. The function of the qualitative marker consists of two kinds of functions: the inflective function and attributive function. The meaning of the qualitative marker consists of two quality degree. The first is quality degree which divides at positive, intensive, elative, excessive, augmentative, and extenuative. The second is a comparison degree which divides at equative, comparative, and superlative.
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Wallis, Sean. "Investigating the additive probability of repeated language production decisions." International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 24, no. 4 (2019): 490–521. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.17093.wal.
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Abstract This paper introduces an experimental paradigm based on probabilistic evidence of the interaction between construction decisions in a parsed corpus. The approach is demonstrated using ICE-GB, a one million-word corpus of English. It finds an interaction between attributive adjective phrases in noun phrases with a noun head, such that the probability of adding adjective phrases falls successively. The same pattern is much weaker in adverbs preceding a verb phrase, implying this decline is not a universal phenomenon. Noun phrase postmodifying clauses exhibit a similar initial fall in the probability of successive clauses modifying the same NP head, and embedding clauses modifying new NP heads. Successive postmodification shows a secondary phenomenon of an increase in additive probability in longer sequences, apparently due to ‘templating’ effects. The author argues that these results can only be explained as cognitive and communicative natural phenomena acting on and within recursive grammar rules.
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Lodej, Sylwester, and John G. Newman. "The non-spiritual semasiology of the adjective divine in Late Modern American English." International Journal of Language and Culture 1, no. 1 (2014): 60–74. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/ijolc.1.1.04lod.
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This paper examines semantic change in the adjective divine as evidenced in its attributive constructions in Late Modern American English. Even before modern English times, the word was capable of bearing two meanings, one spiritual and one non-spiritual. However, according to the Oxford English dictionary, the adjectival divine, a Middle English loanword from Old French, was used earlier (fourteenth century) in the spiritual sense “pertaining to God” and later (fifteenth century) in the non-spiritual sense “supremely good,” and further that it was used primarily in the spiritual sense and secondarily in the non-spiritual sense into modern English times. It is with semantic developments regarding these two senses in American English, particularly the rise in frequency and spread in the applicability of the non-spiritual sense of divine in American English, with which we are concerned here. A main object of the investigation is to identify metaphorical conceptualizations that have been responsible for the emergence of conceptual values, which themselves have facilitated the diachronic semasiological patterns observable in extant textual materials. The corpus of historical American English (COHA) is the source of the bulk of the data analyzed.
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Frenck-Mestre, Cheryl, Alice Foucart, Haydee Carrasco-Ortiz, and Julia Herschensohn. "Processing of grammatical gender in French as a first and second language: Evidence from ERPs." EUROSLA Yearbook 9 (July 30, 2009): 76–106. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/eurosla.9.06fre.
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The present study examined the processing of grammatical gender in second language (L2) French as a function of language background (Experiment 1) and as a function of overt phonetic properties of agreement (Experiment 2) by examining Event Related Potential (ERP) responses to gender discord in L2 French. In Experiment 1 we explored the role of the presence/absence of abstract grammatical gender in the L1 (gendered German, ungendered English): we compared German and English learners of French when processing post-nominal plural (no gender cues on determiner) attributive adjectives that either agreed in gender with the noun or presented a gender violation. We found grammaticalized responses (P600) by native and L1 English learners, but no response by German L1, a result we attribute to the possible influence of plurality, which is gender neutralized in German DP concord. In Experiment 2, we examined the role of overt phonetic cues to noun-adjective gender agreement in French, for both native speakers and Spanish L2 learners of French, finding that both natives and L2 learners showed a more robust P600 in the presence of phonetic cues. These data, in conjunction with those of other ERP studies can best be accounted for by a model that allows for native language influence, that is not, however constrained by age of acquisition, and that must also allow for clear cues in the input to influence acquisition and/or processing.
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Van Goethem, Kristel, and Nikos Koutsoukos. "“Morphological transposition” as the onset of recategorization: The case of luxe in Dutch." Linguistics 56, no. 6 (2018): 1369–412. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/ling-2018-0026.
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Abstract Category change and recategorization processes have received renewed attention in recent years. In this paper, we focus on the shift from noun to adjective on the basis of a corpus-based study of the Dutch lexical item luxe ‘luxury; luxurious’. What is particularly interesting about this case is that in some contexts luxe combines nominal and adjectival properties (e.g. een erg luxe hotel ‘a very luxury/luxurious hotel’) and displays some intersective gradience. We will investigate to what extent luxe exhibits the typical profile of an adjective in present-day Dutch by applying a specific set of synchronic criteria, in addition to a diachronic analysis of the data, and by taking into account regional variation between Belgian and Netherlandic Dutch. This detailed data analysis will allow us to examine which type of recategorization process is responsible for the N>A shift. Since the category change is not formally marked, we will examine whether we are dealing with a case of conversion (a regular morphological process of category change) or syntactic transposition (the ad hoc use of a lexical item in a syntactic context typical of another category). We will conclude that this particular type of change cannot be correctly attributed to either conversion or syntactic transposition and that a new type of category change should be considered responsible for this case and similar ones, i.e. “morphological transposition”. This process takes place within attributive compounds and is followed by a process of debonding and further context expansion.