syntax of adjectives and adverbs relation to their semantics

The first four chapters in the volume address the general question of how the syntax of adjectives and adverbs is related to their semantics.

Peter Svenonius’ contribution, “The position of adjectives and other phrasal modifiers in the decomposition of DP,” examines within-language and crosslinguistic generalizations concerning word order in DP. The work situates adjectives within a general theory of the structure of DP which accounts for the range of typological variation in the distribution of articles, numerals, plural marking, demonstratives, and adjectives. Svenonius then assesses the utility of a highly articulated syntactic structure in accounting for attested restrictions on adjective ordering and argues that such structure is only useful insofar as it reflects semantic properties consistently associated with APs in certain positions, and eschews it when it is made to reflect highly idiosyncratic lexical semantic facts. For example, he postulates functional projections for APs which are focused or which serve to subclassify (as opposed to simply describe) the individuals denoted by the modified noun, but rejects the use of functional projections to account for generalizations (insofar as they exist) such as the preference in English to order adjectives of size before those expressing color. Svenonius’ work thus presents a principled and elegant criterion for when to use functional structure vs. other sorts of theoretical tools to explain word order facts.

Richard Larson and Hiroko Yamakido (“Ezafe and the deep position of nominal modifiers”) examine so-called “Ezafe” marking on APs and other nominal modifiers in Modern Persian and Indo-Iranian languages, and argue that this marking supports an analysis of nominal modifiers as complements to D. Though in some respects this represents a radical departure from the standard syntactic analysis of these expressions, Larson and Yamakido observe that the proposal is semantically well grounded in Generalized Quantifier theory (Barwise and Cooper 1981) and allows for a very natural treatment of Ezafe as a kind of Case marking which licenses nominal modifiers in postnominal positions they would otherwise be unable to occupy. Larson and Yamakido suggest extending this Case marker analysis of Ezafe to similar phenomena in unrelated languages, including determiner spreading in Modern Greek, thus bringing a new perspective to a set of data which is otherwise quite puzzling given standard theoretical assumptions.

In “Meaning–form correlations and adjective position in Spanish,” Violeta Demonte explores the relationship between the position of adjectives within DP in Spanish and their interpretation. Specifically, after providing a review of the distinctive properties of a comprehensive set of adjective classes in Spanish, she shows how these classes can be grouped into those whose members are non-predicative (and denote functions from properties to properties) vs. predicative (and denote properties of individuals); this latter class, in turn, can be further divided into those adjectives which are interpreted restrictively vs. nonrestrictively. Once the special case of focused adjectives is taken into account, this tripartite classification provides for an elegant account of facts which at first sight appear to defy any generalization about the syntax–semantics interface. Demonte then argues that these three classes combine in the syntax via (respectively) the operations Pair-Merge, external Merge, and internal Merge in the framework of Chomsky (2001a, b). The chapter by Demonte offers an example of how an independently motivated syntactic proposal can point the way towards a better semantic analysis.

Marcin Morzycki’s contribution (“Nonrestrictive modifiers in nonparenthetical positions”), like Demonte’s, is concerned with nonrestrictive modification, but in this case by adverbs rather than by adjectives. Morzycki begins by distinguishing restrictive vs. nonrestrictive readings of adverbs in English; he then shows that nonrestrictive readings are identified exclusively with preverbal position. Finally, he proposes a semantic analysis for the nonrestrictive readings based on Potts’ 2005 “multidimensional” analysis of parentheticals: a semantic rule which is sensitive to linear order and composes nonrestrictive modifiers not as part of the main propositional content of the clause but rather as conventionally implicated content. Morzycki ends his contribution with the observation that order-sensitive semantic composition rules are not the norm. Note also the contrast between the English adverb facts and the Spanish adjective data discussed in Demonte’s contribution: In Spanish, nonrestrictive readings are available for both pre- and postnominal adjectives; what is excluded is a restrictive reading for predicative adjectives in prenominal position. Altogether, the facts and the proposed analysis point to questions for future research: might recourse to an order-specific rule be avoided? And to what extent might a strict link be maintained between a semantic rule such as the one Morzycki proposes and the syntactic rule of internal Merge proposed by Demonte for nonrestrictive adjectival modifiers?

The subsequent four chapters in the volume are primarily concerned with lexical semantic issues. In “Adjectives and degree modification,” Jenny Doetjes, like other contributors to the volume, integrates theory and detailed descriptive work. She uses the distribution of different classes of degree modifiers with different types of gradable expressions (adjectives, verbs, and nouns) as a probe on how best to understand and represent gradability semantically. She argues that gradable expressions form a continuum with adjectives at one extreme and plural (count) nouns at the other. This cross-categorial manifestation of gradability naturally raises the question of whether a degree argument should be postulated just for some gradable expressions (adjectives only, as has been commonly proposed since Seuren 1973, or adjectives plus the most adjective-like verbs), or for all gradable expressions. After considering the pros and cons of these various options for the purposes of explaining the distribution of degree modifiers, Doetjes suggests that the key to understanding the facts lies as much as or more in the nature of the scales associated with each type of expression: adjectives are special in being the only type of gradable expression consistently associated with scales whose standards are determined relative to a comparison class.

The relationship between gradability in the adjectival and verbal domain is also the subject of Christopher Kennedy and Beth Levin’s contribution (“Measure of change: The adjectival core of degree achievements”). As mentioned above, in earlier work (Hay et al. 1999) they proposed that the telicity properties of so-called degree achievement verbs such as to cool (Dowty 1979), which are generally deadjectival, can be explained as a consequence of the different scale structures associated with the adjectives from which the verbs derive. However, their earlier proposal was subject to various criticisms (see e.g. Kearns 2007; Pinon, this volume) to which the present work responds. Kennedy and Levin propose that the derivation of verbs from adjectives is accompanied semantically by the introduction of what they term a “measure of change” function that turns the measure function on individuals denoted by the adjective into one that takes an individual and an event as arguments and returns the degree that represents the amount that the individual changes in the property measured by the adjective as a result of participating in the event. The chapter closes by suggesting that this analysis of degree achievements could form the basis for an analysis of other classes of verbs with variable telicity.

In his chapter (“Aspectual composition with degrees”), Christopher Pinon addresses precisely this question, and concludes that the degree-based analysis of variable telicity proposed in Kennedy and Levin’s earlier work on degree achievements (Hay et al. 1999 and Kennedy and Levin 2002), as well as a related proposal by Caudal and Nicolas (2005), is insufficient as a fully general, compositional account of aspectual composition. Focusing on the case of “incremental theme verbs” like eat, read, and so forth, Pinon discusses a number of problems with the earlier degree-based analyses, central of which is the lack of an explicit account of the role of nominal reference in determining telicity: why a quantized object results in a telic event description (eat an apple in ten minutes) while a cumulative object derives an atelic one (eat applesauce for ten minutes). Pinon’s proposal retains the underlying intuitions of the earlier accounts – that the semantics of verbs that show variable telicity involves a measure of the degree to which the affected object changes in some gradable property as a result of participation in the event – but differs crucially in its characterization of what exactly gets measured. Instead of measuring a “bare individual,” verbs of gradual change – which denote what Pinon calls incremental degree functions – measure the degree to which an individual as an individual of type O changes, where O is the descriptive content of the incremental theme argument. Pinon provides an axiomatic treatment of aspectual composition based on this proposal and shows how it accounts for the relation between nominal and verbal reference.

Finally, Graham Katz (“Manner modification of state verbs”) addresses a puzzle concerning the lexical semantics of manner adverbs, specifically, the ostensible inability of such adverbs to modify stative predicates. Katz argues that the modification facts constitute a strong argument against postulating a Parsonsian state variable in the logical representation of such predicates, contra Landman (2000) and Mittwoch (2005). In order for the argumentation to go through, Katz defends the position that the putative cases of manner modification brought to bear on the issue by Landman and Mittwoch (such as to love passionately) are only apparent, and can be instead reduced to one of three alternative kinds of modification: degree modification, idiomatic collocations (such as to love deeply), and what he terms “event-related” uses, on which the adverb describes not the state directly but rather an event which supports the existence of the state. Like the chapters by Doetjes, Kennedy and Levin, and Pinon, Katz’s contribution offers yet another example of how a careful study of modification can provide insight into the basic lexical semantic properties of the modified expressions.

The remaining three chapters in the volume deal with aspects of the syntax and semantics of adjectives and adverbs that interact with facts about the discourse context. Each chapter takes as its starting point a case study in one or more classes of adjectives or adverbs, the analysis of which has implications for a general, integrated theory of the syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of the lexical categories in question.

Adam Wyner’s contribution (“Towards flexible types with constraints for manner and factive adverbs”) contrasts two approaches to the syntax and semantics of adverbs: what he terms the “fixed types” theory, on which the syntactic category and semantic type of an adverb are held to be unvarying, versus the so-called “flexible types” theory, on which any given adverb is allowed to range over a set of syntactic and semantic types. The former hasproblems accounting for the relative flexibility of adverb distribution without recourse to syntactic operations such as movement; the latter obviously runs the risk of making excessively weak predictions concerning that distribution. After reviewing some basic arguments for and against each type of approach, Wyner turns to establishing certain parallelisms between the conditions governing intersentential anaphora involving VPs and clauses and those governing the distribution and interpretation of factive and manner adverbs (such as stupidly and quickly, respectively). Wyner argues that a flexible types analysis for these adverbs can account for this parallelism, while a fixed types analysis cannot, thus showing how facts about the discourse context can be brought to bear on decisions about the syntax and semantics of adverbs.

In “Lexical semantics and pragmatics of evaluative adverbs,” Olivier Bonami and Daniele Godard provide a new semantic and pragmatic analysis of what they term “evaluative” adverbs such as unfortunately and strangely. These adverbs have various distinguishing semantic and pragmatic properties; for example, they have been argued to make a contribution to the discourse which is independent of the main assertion of the clause in which they appear (see e.g. Bartsch 1976). Bonami and Godard discuss these properties, relate them to the semantics of the adjectives from which these adverbs derive, and argue against previous accounts of evaluatives on which they denote properties of facts, where facts are given a special ontological status distinct from propositions. As an alternative, Bonami and Godard propose a strictly pragmatic analysis of evaluatives on which they denote properties of propositions (like other sentential adverbs, they argue), but introduce a specific kind of dialogue move, which the authors term “ancillary commitment.” Bonami and Godard’s analysis thus seeks to maintain a simpler natural language ontology and greater uniformity in the lexical semantics of adverbs by placing some of the burden of explanation for the behavior of adverbs on an arguably independently necessary model of dialogue.

The volume closes with Gina Taranto’s contribution, “Discourse adjectives,” a study of the natural class of adjectives that includes apparent, clear, evident, and obvious. Taranto presents the distinctive syntactic and semantic characteristics of this class and proceeds to an analysis whose goal is to account for their apparent factivity and to explain the peculiar way in which these adjectives contribute informatively to discourse. Specifically, she argues that they fulfill an essentially metalinguistic function of helping to synchronize the common ground of the conversation. Taranto also discusses the consequences of the analysis for a theory of discourse and concludes on the basis of the facts that the discourse model must include a representation both of the conversation taking place (see Stalnaker 1998) and of the individual public and private commitments of the conversation participants (Gunlogson 2001).

مواضيع ذات صلة

Combining Dem–Num–Adj with unit, sort, and n

Combining Dem–Num–Adj with Art–Pl–N

Universal 20 of Greenberg

Classifiers

The position of adjectives and other phrasal modifiers in the decomposition of DP Introduction

Discourse

Syntax Word order and semantic type

Adjectives and Adverbs Syntax, Semantics, and Discourse Introduction

Word by word

Finale—Master Class Introduction

Finale—Master Class

Sign language