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This study investigates how learners of English process adjectival participles in both attributive and predicative positions within sentences in order to identify whether difficulties associated with participles stem from learner-specific or English-specific characteristics. A Chinese-speaking group and a mixed language group participated in Study 1 that used the target sentence in English as L2 without contextual cues. A subgroup of the Chinese participants took part in Study 2 that used target sentences with contextual cues. Results showed that the two groups' performance was different in the use of pre-nominal attributive adjectival participles after controlling for English proficiency (Study 1). Contextual cues did not facilitate Chinese learners' performance (Study 2). The target word frequency effects disappeared when contextual cues were provided. These findings suggest that the complexities of adjectival participles reside not only in the linguistic characteristics of English, but also in the learner characteristics of L1 background and English proficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The word "Christian" can mean different things to different people and can be used in different contexts. After discussing the first biblical instance in which the name was used in Antioch (Acts 13:26), this article examines present-day evangelical parameters of what it means to be a Christian taking into account the broad evangelical consensus. It then compares and contrasts it to some adjectival descriptors such as "nominal" and "anonymous" (e.g. K. Rahner) as they are applied in the wider ecumenical world, finding them defective. As was the case in the New Testament Antioch, being a Christian means having heard, understood and received the gospel even today. In this sense, "nominal" and "anonymous" Christianity is a selfcontradictory definition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This study focuses on a pidgin predominantly used by Asian immigrants in the city of Abha in the southwestern region of Saudi Arabia, examining multifunctionality as it appears in three grammatical categories, definiteness, predication, and pronouns. Whereas previous studies on Gulf Arabic Pidgin have described the variety in terms of multifunctionality (e.g. Avram 2004; Bakir 2014, and Potsdam and Alanazi 2014), the current study focuses on the different pathways that bring it about. Three types of multifunctionality are described in terms of refunctionalization, generalization and neutralization. hada (< *haaða 'this') is refunctionalized to mark definiteness and as a deictic marker fills the function of the demonstrative. fī, (< *fi 'at, exist') has multiple functions being used as a preposition, an existential marker in the meaning of 'there is/are', a generalized predicate marker when occurring before adjectival, nominal and verbal predicates. The pronominal system shows simplification from ten to five pronouns only. The study is based on data collected in interviews with a random sample of twenty-four Asian participants of both sexes. Their ages ranged from 26 to 45 years old and their length of stay in Saudi Arabia ranged from four to nine years. They occupied different jobs. A total of twenty nine hours of audio-visual interview data were analysed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates adjectival agreement in a group of Middle Welsh native prose texts and a sample of translations from around the end of the Middle Welsh period and the beginning of the Early Modern period. It presents a new methodology, employing tagged historical corpora allowing for consistent linguistic comparison. The adjectival agreement case study tests a hypothesis regarding position and function of adjectives in Middle Welsh, as well as specific semantic groups of adjectives, such as colours or related modifiers. The systematic analysis using an annotated corpus reveals that there are interesting differences between native and translated texts, as well as between individual texts. However, zooming in on our adjectival agreement case study, we conclude that these differences do not correspond to many of our hypotheses or assumptions about how certain texts group together. In particular, no clear split into native and translated texts emerged between the texts in our corpus. This paper thus shows interesting results for both (historical) linguists, especially those working on agreement, and scholars of medieval Celtic philology and translation texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I examine certain gradable adjectives in Serbian, whose suppletive comparative forms display unexpected semantic properties. In particular, while these adjectives are ambiguous between intersective and non-intersective readings in the positive form, their suppletive comparative and superlative forms are limited to the non-intersective interpretation. These facts show, I argue, that in a theory like Distributed Morphology either adjectival roots or category-assigning heads they combine with come in semantic subtypes (i.e. are specified for certain semantic properties; Harley 2005, Anagnostopoulou and Samioti 2014). I show how the analysis I propose explains semantic properties of change-of-state verbs derived from these adjectives and why these adjectives are restricted to the intersective interpretation when their positive form takes the long-form (definite) inflection. I also provide an illustration of how Arregi and Nevins's (2014) analysis of the so-called "disuppletive" roots, such worse/badder, can deal with the facts presented in this paper. Finally, I discuss implications of these facts in the context of Bobaljik's (2012) approach to suppletive comparative morphology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a comprehensive overview of prefixation in Romance languages putting in relation the differences between standard and non-standard varieties in the current synchronic stage and, from a diachronic perspective, the different productivity of verbal prefixation and nominal and adjectival prefixation over the history of Romance languages. The article also deals with the relations between system-internal factors, such as the delimitation and interaction between native and foreign word-formation, as well as the competition between verbal prefixation and other linguistic resources through which spatial information can be expressed. The focus will also be placed on system-external factors, including the diffusion in common language of learned terms which have contributed to revitalizing nominal and adjectival prefixation, although not verbal prefixation. Such an approach makes it possible to account for the higher productivity in current standard Romance languages of nominal and adjectival prefixation compared with verbal prefixation. Furthermore, it provides an explanation for the differences between standard and non-standard Romance languages with regard to the productivity of nominal and adjectival prefixation. The replacement of spatial verbal prefixes with verbs expressing path in the root is interpreted as the result of a more general restructuring of space encoding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparison is an exception among Indo-European morphological categories due to its considerably limited scope. For example, data gathered from the Czech National Corpus (www.korpus.cz) give that in the highly inflected language of Czech just 6% of adjectives have degree forms, and only 3% have both degrees of comparison. The property of being gradable depends on meaning rather than form: we can only compare scalar adjectives, i.e. adjectives that denote a quality that can be expressed on a scale. Semantics is already manifested at a morphemic level in inflected languages: both roots and affixes are carriers of meaning, and the meaning of a word is established through their combination. Scalarity is sometimes a property of an individual adjective, but sometimes a whole adjectival type is scalar or non-scalar, i.e. the derivative affix itself makes the adjective scalar or non-scalar (e.g. the suffix of appurtenance -ārius, the diminutive -ulus etc.). The present article is concerned with scalarity, and thus gradability, in the specific case of Latin adjectival compounds. The aim is to determine which compounds are gradable, which are not, and why. Compounds are characterized as a combination of at least two meaningful components followed by a suf- fix, and these (i.e. at least three) elements semantically interact. The question therefore is, for a given type of compound, which of these elements serves as a determinant of gradability. To answer this question, it is first necessary to attempt a classification of Latin adjectival compounds. Compounds may be classified according to various criteria: semantic (e.g. the traditional distinction between endo- and exocentric compounds), morphological (based on the form of one of the components), or syntactic (based on the relation between the components). Despite scalarity being a semantic term, for gradability of adjectival compounds it proves most efficient to use a syntactic classification, based on which groups may be defined by a common approach and the analysis of which enables more general conclusions. The language material used for this study was obtained by first excerpting all the adjectival compounds from the Oxford Latin Dictionary (the compounds being adjectives formed through a word-formative process in which the last step is composition, or "derivational composition", i.e. composition and suffixation). For each of these adjectives (and adverbs derived therefrom), an individual search was then carried out in the database Bibliotheca Teubneriana Latina III to establish whether the adjective is attested in synthetic comparative and/or superlative form, and also whether it is attested in periphrastic comparative and/or superlative form (in combination with the adverbs magis or maximē). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with the Old English adjectival construction that consists of the copulative verb bēon ‘to be’ and the past participle. Grammaticalization is gauged as to the agreement between the subject noun phrase and the past participle and from the perspective of deflexion, which is considered the final stage of grammaticalization. The highest rates of agreement are found in Ælfrician texts and translations from Latin, while other texts like the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle not only evince remarkably lower figures of agreement, but also show a decrease over time. The conclusion is reached that, although the grammaticalization of the past participle in passive constructions is not complete on the basis of deflexion, the process is well underway in Old English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the conditions under which the temporal expression immer noch ("still") and related phase particles are allowed or excluded in German adjectival passive sentences. A detailed discussion of the phenomenon is provided, and it is argued that not only the semantics of involved linguistic expressions and constructions, but also background script knowledge must be taken into account to fully understand the combinatorics. A notion of scripts is developed as a finite sequence of cognitive frames, where one frame precedes and provides an occasion for the next one. The paper determines a new condition for the exclusion of immer noch that up to now went unnoticed. Specifically, it is claimed that adjectival passives denoting the result state of a script-final event cannot be combined with immer noch due to conflicting inferences. The proposed integration of linguistic material with background frame and script knowledge is based on the central assumption that event kinds correspond to frames, which opens up a new perspective on the relation between conceptual structure and compositional semantics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents two novel findings: I show (i) that there is a strong connection between ϕ-feature agreement and scope freezing in Swedish, and (ii) that Swedish tough-constructions (TCs) involve movement of the embedded object into the matrix subject position. Scope freezing is shown to take place in adjectival TCs, morphological passives and adjectival raising structures in Swedish, but not in verbal TCs, periphrastic passives or verbal raising constructions. The difference in scope possibilities in adjectival and verbal contexts is captured by analyzing movement induced by ϕ-feature agreement (adjectival cases) as taking place in the syntax, and purely EPP-driven movement (verbal cases) as taking place post-syntactically. Following Sauerland and Elbourne (2002), it is assumed that reconstructed readings do not involve any undoing operation but reflect the position of an element prior to post-syntactic movement. Regarding TCs, I further show that adjectival and verbal TCs in Swedish are uniformly derived via long A′-A-movement of the underlying object into the matrix subject position. Since infinitival clauses in Swedish have been shown to have a smaller structure than a full CP (Engdahl 1986), movement of the object does not violate the Williams Cycle (Williams 2003) and is therefore not an instance of Improper Movement. Swedish TCs thereby share properties both with English TCs (A′-properties) and with German TCs (long movement), placing the Swedish ones in between. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study examines potential age and microparametric effects in childhood bilinguals (currently adults) in an understudied language pairing, Polish-Spanish. Specifically, a Spanish group (N = 28) and a Sequential child bilingual (N = 22) and a Simultaneous bilingual (N = 8) group living in Misiones, Argentina, completed three experimental tasks assessing their knowledge of the syntactic and syntax-semantic distribution of adjectives. Results show that, despite several semantic differences related to adjective position, both experimental groups demonstrate knowledge of interpretive constraints that fall out from underlying Spanish syntax. Differences predicted as a result of crosslinguistic influence were not evidenced, yet, contrary to Polish and Spanish, the experimental groups accepted ungrammatical postnominal intensional adjectives significantly more than Spanish speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adjectival comparatives like txiki baino txikiago 'smaller than small' in Basque exhibit some striking properties that present a challenge for previous analyses of inequality comparatives. The research on this unstudied type of adjectival comparatives in Basque -- henceforth SMALL comparatives -- is especially interesting due to the rich morphology and freedom of word order that Basque displays. These two properties are vital for the testing of the hypotheses on the structure of these comparatives. First, the examination of the underlying structure of the standard of comparison reveals that these adjectival modifiers are inequality comparatives with a phrasal standard. Second, the study of the extraction constraints of the standard and the particular distribution of SMALL comparatives evidence the fact that the standard marker in these comparatives behaves as a coordinating conjunction, and that these modifiers can appear inside a Determiner Phrase, in contrast with previously analysed adjectival comparatives. These properties are explained by assuming the functional analysis of adjectives and comparative markers (-ago '-er, more'), and proposing a coordination analysis of these phrasal comparatives. The study of SMALL comparatives hence shows that the coordination analysis of comparative structures is necessary not only for clausal comparatives (Napoli & Nespor 1986 for Italian; Sáez 1992 for Spanish; and Lechner 2004 for English and German) but also for phrasal comparatives such as SMALL comparatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we argue that verb clusters in Dutch varieties are merged and linearized in fully ascending (1-2-3) or fully descending (3-2-1) orders. We argue that verb clusters that deviate from these orders involve non-verbal material: adjectival participles, or nominal infinitives. As a result, our approach does not involve any unmotivated movements that are specific for verb clusters. Support for our analysis comes from (i) the interpretation of verb clusters; (ii) the fact that order variation depends on the types of verbs involved, which can be explained by selectional requirements of the verbs; and (iii) the geographic co-occurrence patterns of various orders. First, the 1-3-2 and 3-1-2 orders are argued to be ascending orders with a non-verbal 3. Indeed these orders occur in grammars that have ascending, rather than descending, verb clusters. Secondly, the 1-3-2 order is argued to be an interrupted V1-V2 cluster with a non-verbal 3. Indeed, this order is most common in the region where non-verbal material can interrupt the verb cluster. Our analysis of word order variation in verb clusters in terms of principles of grammar is further supported by an experiment in which we asked a large number of speakers distributed over the Dutch language area to rank all logically possible orders, including orders that are not common in their own variety of Dutch. The results demonstrate that speakers apply their syntactic knowledge to rank verb cluster orders that they do not use themselves. We argue that this knowledge cannot be due to familiarity with the various orders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the features noted by some authors, adjectivization is one of the main general features of specialized texts. This article deals with the phenomenon of adjectival condensation, as a specific feature of the specialized discourse in Romanian and French travel guides. The presence of adjectival condensation in the specialized discourse increases text density, leading to a condensation of the text at the syntactic level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article is positioned at the interface between onomastics and word formation. It examines the German adjective-forming suffix-isch, which combines with proper names (Lutherisch 'Lutheran') as well as with common nouns (höllisch 'hellish'). Making use of diachronic corpora of German, the development of -isch is studied with respect to different appellative and onymic base classes. Based on graphematic evidence as well as on their referential properties, these base classes are arranged on a scale of onymicity. The most name-like categories are examined more closely. First, utilizing the distinction qualifying adjectives vs. descriptive adjectives, adjectival derivatives from personal names in German are contrasted with those in English. Furthermore, for family name as well as town name bases, diachronic variation in productivity shifts of -ischderivatives and competing derivational patterns is investigated. Based on the results, it can be hypothesized that the more name-like the words are, the more instability is to be expected in the diachronic derivational patterns, also observable in a high degree of cross-linguistic variation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Absolute quantifiers (e.g. many, few, three) have adjectival uses, but when initial they function as grounding elements: like demonstratives, articles, and relative quantifiers (e.g. all, most, every), they indicate the epistemic status of the nominal referent. This ambivalence is due to their being intermediate, having semantic affinities with both categories but being marginal with respect to each. The dual role of absolute quantifiers is readily described in Cognitive Grammar, given its dynamic view of meaning as consisting in semantic functions (interactive tasks to be fulfilled). These functions belong to the symbolic assemblies constituting language structure; they are fundamental, the role of lexicon and grammar being to effect their implementation. More schematic functions -such as grounding -are independent of any particular implementation. In the absence of a dedicated grounding element, absolute quantifiers assume that function through a conventional pattern of implicit functional augmentation (a common type of construction). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we present a study of adjectival/adverbial modification using modern type theories (MTTs), i.e. type theories within the tradition of Martin-Löf. We present an account of various issues concerning adjectival/adverbial modification and argue that MTTs can be used as an adequate language for interpreting NL semantics. MTTs are not only expressive enough to deal with a range of modification phenomena, but are furthermore well-suited to perform reasoning tasks that can be easily implemented (e.g. in proof-assistants) given their proof-theoretic nature. In MTT-semantics, common nouns are interpreted as types rather than predicates. Therefore, in order to capture the semantics of adjectives adequately, one needs to meet the challenge of modeling CNs modified by adjectives as types. To explicate that this can be done successfully, we first look at the mainstream classification of adjectives, i.e. intersective, subsective and non-subsective adjectives. There, we show that the rich type structure available in MTTs, along with a suitable subtyping framework, offers an adequate mechanism to model these cases. In particular, this modelling naturally takes care of the characterising inferences associated with each class of adjectives. Then, more advanced issues on adjectival modification are discussed: (a) degree adjectives, (b) comparatives and (c) multidimensional adjectives. There, it is shown that the use of indexed types can be usefully applied in order to deal with these cases. In the same vein, the issue of adverbial modification is discussed. We study two general typings for sentence and VP adverbs respectively. It is shown that the rich type structure in MTTs further provides useful organisational mechanisms in giving formal semantics for adverbs. In particular, we discuss the use of $$\varSigma $$ -types to capture the veridicality/non-veridicality distinction and further discuss cases of intensional adverbs using the type theoretic notion of context (i.e. without resorting to intensional typing). We also look at manner, subject and speech act adverbials and propose solutions using MTTs. Finally, we show that the current proof technology can help mechanically check the associated inferences. A number of our proposals concerning adjectival and adverbial modification have been formalised in the proof assistant Coq and many of the associated inference patterns are checked to be correctly captured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many languages a set of adjectives are characterized by their 'past/passive' participial morphology. Lexicalist and syntactic approaches to word formation converge on the claim that such adjectives can be derived from verbal inputs with no external argument but never from verbal inputs with an external argument. That is, there are 'adjectival passives' but no 'adjectival antipassives' marked with the same morphology. I argue that a sub-class of adjectives marked with the 'past/passive' participial morpheme -do in Spanish, labeled participios activos in descriptive grammars, should be treated as adjectival antipassives in precisely this sense. I propose that Spanish has an Asp head that (i) is spelled out with 'past/passive' participial morphology and (ii) selects an unergative verbal input creating a state/property whose argument corresponds to the external argument of that verbal source. If on the right track, the proposal supports the existence of a typology of adjectivizing heads that are spelled out uniformly with 'past/passive' participial morphology but must be distinguished in terms of selectional and semantic properties (Bruening 2014, Word formation is syntactic: Adjectival passives in English. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 32. 363-422; Embick 2004, On the structure of resultative participles in English. Linguistic Inquiry 35. 355-392). It differs from previous approaches in claiming that such a typology must include root-derived adjectives, as well as 'active (=unergative)' and 'passive' deverbal adjectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the recent literature on gradable predicates, it has been argued that the notion of a differential degree (one that measures the distance between two values on a scale) plays a role in the semantics of both adjectival and verbal predicates. This paper provides further evidence in favor of this claim by putting forward a unified account of the prefix po- that attaches to Russian comparative adjectives/adverbs and the attenuative po- that combines with verbs. Building on Filip's (2000) and Součková's (2004a, b) analysis of the verbal po-, it is argued that po- is a single prefix whose function is to restrict the differential degree and which applies within the verbal, adjectival, and adverbial domains. In addition, this paper investigates the interaction of this prefix with verbs lexicalizing scales of different dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is trying to show that the Proto-Slavic past active participle *moklъ ‘wet, damp' of the verb *mot'i močeši ‘to be wet/damp', as the word-formation predecessor of the areally well attested *mok-nǫ-ti ‘to become wet/damp', has been preserved through secondary adjectival functions in the Slavic common-noun and proper-noun lexicons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 'swiftfooted', 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper hypothesizes that as an expression becomes more frequent in one grammatical context, its mental retrievability improves, which in turn makes it more easily available in different yet closely related (analogous) grammatical contexts. Such a mechanism can account for the progression of gradual change. The hypothesis generates two testable predictions. First, innovative constructions should be more likely to emerge if their analogical models are better entrenched. Second, an expression's retrievability can also be improved by priming, which in the short term should have a similar effect to entrenchment. These predictions are tested against the development of the noun key into an adjective (as in a very key argument). The change is gradual, starting with increased productivity of compounds with key as specifying element, leading later to debonded and clearly adjectival uses. The development of key is analyzed using data from the British Houses of Parliament. The effect of entrenchment is tested against individual variation. Next, situations are investigated where key has been primed, either by an earlier instance of key or by a collocate of key. The evidence supports the hypothesis. Innovative uses of key are favored under conditions that improve the retrievability of its more conventionalized uses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Antiques are undoubtedly objects worthy of aesthetic appreciation, but do they have a distinctive aesthetic value in virtue of being antiques? In this article we give an account of what it is to be an antique that gives the thesis that they do have a distinctive aesthetic value a chance of being true and suggests what that distinctive value consists in. After introducing our topic in Section I, in Section II we develop and defend the Adjectival Thesis: the thesis that the concept of being an antique is an adjectival concept. This provides us with the means to formulate our definition, which we do in Section III. In Section IV we further explicate and defend our definition. In Section V we conclude by briefly saying where we think our definition could be improved, by making a few comments about the aesthetics of antiques and by stating an interesting consequence of our definition: that it is not analytic that antiques are old. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Matisoff (2003) reconstructs an "adjectival prefix" *gV-, based on work by Wolfenden (1929). As a result of surveying grammatical descriptions of more than 90 Tibeto-Burman languages, the present study provides evidence to reconstruct Matisoff's adjectival prefix as a nominalizer whose functional range includes (but is not limited to) the adjectival marking. Evidence for the prefix is found in three major genetic subdivisions. Within Bradley's (2002) Western branch, Baram (Newaric) has a particularly versatile nominalizer ki-~gi-, and Eastern Kiranti languages have *gV-...-pa nominalizing circumfixes. In Bradley's Eastern branch, rGyalrongic languages have velar prefixes that function as the main nominalizers. Further, in DeLancey's (2015) Central branch of Trans-Himalayan (Sino-Tibetan), we find reflexes of *gV- in many languages, most notably the versatile nominalizer kV- in Lamkang (Northwest Kuki-Chin). Other languages of the India-Myanmar border with unresolved phylogenetic status within Tibeto-Burman also have reflexes of *gV-, most prominently Karbi and Tangkhul (Konnerth 2012). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to briefly analyze the agreement patterns in Polish constructions with quantified subjects and participial/adjectival predicates. The analysis addresses two troublesome issues: the Genitive of Quantification, i.e., the source of Genitive on the nominal complement in structural contexts, and the optionality in agreement in case between the participial/adjectival predicate and the numeral (≥ 5) or the noun of the quantified subject. The essential part of the proposal is based on the nanosyntactic approach to the nature of case, i.e., the split Kase Phrase (Caha 2009, 2010). The analysis is concerned with the functional sequence of the extended nominal projection and its role in the syntactic derivation of case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper defines and analyzes the morphosyntactic properties of firstconjunct agreement, which arises when an adjective or verb agrees with the highest/ first conjunct of a coordinate noun phrase. This agreement pattern is derived by means of the syntactic operation Agree and a new postsyntactic mechanism which acts as a filter on Vocabulary Insertion within the framework of Distributed Morphology. The proposed filter is called Vocabulary Item Feature Harmony, and roughly consists of (phi-)feature identity between Vocabulary Items. The biaspectual analysis, and especially feature harmony, is used to understand and account for gradable and variable acceptability of first-conjunct agreement, as well as the distribution of this agreement pattern in relation to another agreement pattern, namely, masculine plural agreement (with the coordinate phrase as a whole). The investigation is focused on Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian first-conjunct agreement, but the findings could be extrapolated to similar cases in other languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The view that suppression of a concept within the scope of negation is not unconditional was originally introduced by Giora (2003, 2006; Giora and Fein 1999; Giora et al. 2007) via the retention hypothesis. Giora and her colleagues argue that negation does not necessarily suppress the concept within its scope. Instead, it often retains it for pragmatic considerations, both in the mind of the speaker and the addressee. The present study provides a quantitative corpus-based test for the retention hypothesis, that is the non-obligatoriness of suppression of negated concepts (also known as the negation as mitigation hypothesis, Giora 2003; Giora et al. 2005b), via a two-pronged method which combines corpus data and behavioral data. It focuses on the notion of polarity strength, which is a numerical value disclosing the degree of positivity or negativity associated with an adjective. A simple statistic which is introduced for the sake of this study - the Strength Index (SI) - naïvely assumes that canonical adjectives can be mitigated by replacing them with their negated antonyms, thus making it possible to attribute SI to them. SI is calculated for 8 canonical adjectival antonymous pairs of an emotive nature (such as good-bad ). Depending on prior positive expectations, the retention hypothesis will gain support if the following results are obtained: Correlation between the SIs of unfavorable adjectives (e.g., bad ) and behavioral data on the one hand, and the lack of correlation between the SIs of favorable adjectives (e.g., good ) and behavioral data, on the other hand. Results attest to this correlation pattern, providing support for the retention hypothesis (see also Colston 1999). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I argue that the debate on the division of labor between grammar and pragmatics, at least as it pertains to pragmatic free enrichment, needs to be better grounded empirically. Often, only a reduced set of facts from English is used to substantiate claims regarding pragmatic free enrichment. But considering a reduced set of facts from a single language can only afford limited (and, sometimes, wrong) results, because we can merely see whatever this one language chooses to express. Two cases studies are presented: adjectival fragments, and implicit indefinite objects. A grammatical analysis is defended for them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Expletives have been argued to be merged in Spec, TP, Spec, vP, or within DP. This paper argues that this line of thought does not apply to the existential expletive fii of Jordanian Arabic. The arguments presented in this paper rest on the assumption that merge of fii in any of those proposed merge sites cannot be empirically substantiated since it does not account for data from Jordanian Arabic. It is argued instead that, in an existential construction, fii heads its own projection, an expletive phrase, with the associate projected as complement of the expletive. Further, the expletive phrase is argued to merge in the specifier of a predicate phrase, whose head is a null adjectival predicate. Therefore, the view of fii as a syntactic dummy is reconsidered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the secondary grammaticalization of the English adverbial -ly suffix and makes claims about the concept of secondary grammaticalization. Secondary grammaticalization is defined as the development of a new grammatical function in an already grammatical element. It is shown that the development of the -ly suffix involves a number of the processes which are associated with grammaticalization, e.g. paradigmatization, specialization, obligatorification, subjectification, layering and persistence. However, none of these processes seem to be exclusive to secondary grammaticalization, as the process is defined here. It is argued that the concept of grammaticalization should be redefined, and some possible definitions are suggested. It is also suggested that future studies should divide grammaticalization processes into types according to the nature of the target element, as suggested by Kranich (this issue). Such an approach may perhaps uncover categorical differences between different types of grammaticalization processes. Another important claim is that the concept of obligatoriness should include both language internal obligatoriness and communicative obligatoriness, where the latter also includes socially determined obligatoriness. Further, the concept of paradigmaticity should include the opposition of social variants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the morpho-syntactic properties of Spanish verbs formed by - ear affixation (EAV henceforth). These include deadjectival (e.g. amarillear ‘to go yellow’), denominal (e.g. fanfarronear ‘to behave like a boaster’), and deverbal verbs (e.g. bailotear ‘to dance in an irregular manner’), which do not form a natural semantic class. The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to develop a unified morpho-syntactic analysis of EAV within Hale and Keyser's (1993) approach to argument structure – as developed in Mateu (2002) and Acedo-Matellán and Mateu (2011, 2013) – and Distributed Morphology; second, to take this proposal as a basis to account for cross-dialectal variation in the productivity of EAV. We group EAV into three basic syntactic classes that share a core structure v + P. We argue that a large subset of unergative verbs must be analyzed as events with a specifier that select for a relational/predicative complement, a type of structure that is shown to underlie verbs with an adverbial argument. - Ear is further checked against unmarked - ar , the default verb-forming suffix in Iberian Spanish. We show that an underspecified analysis of EAV is compatible with cross-dialectal variation in that it accommodates the (non-)predictable range of meanings found across American varieties where - ear has become the default verbalizer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although there is a long tradition of deriving Old English hlūd, Old High German hlūt 'loud', Old English hlӯd 'sound' etc. from the Proto-Indo-European root *ḱleu̯- 'hear', such a derivation poses insurmountable phonological problems. Several attempts have been made to explain these West Germanic formations away as analogical after seṭ-roots in the zero grade, but a closer investigation (described in this paper) has revealed that the latter formations could not serve as the source of analogy for the forms of the hlūd-type. In this article, it is proposed that the forms of the hlūd-type derive from another verbal root altogether. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the relationship between fictionalist nominalism and applied mathematics. Topics discussed include an argument based on applied mathematics against nominalism simpliciter and a modification of an argument that is directed specifically against fictionalist nominalism. Also discussed are the rectangular-surface/paint-can numerical requirement principle and the first adjectival-nominal correspondence principle.

The present paper investigates a type of broad-subject construction in Egyptian Arabic in which an adjective or participial structurally qualifies the head noun (or subject) but logically qualifies a subsequent noun, as in ir-raagil [il-ħilwiin banaat-u] 'the man the beautiful.PL his daughters'. This Adjectival Relative Construction is interesting in that it incorporates properties of both relative clauses and adjectival phrases. I evaluate the main analytical approaches in the literature and conclude that it must be analyzed as a hybrid type of nominal modifier that has adjectival and relative characteristics. Binding to the head noun is accomplished through a semantically motivated resumptive pronoun. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although certain crossing relations between two arguments in verbal constructions have been discussed in previous works, few studies have been conducted on adjectival constructions. Based on a large-scale database of adjectives, this study examines the syntactic constructions of adjectival predicates and classifies diverse types of two-arguments-crossing (TAC) relations in the adjectival constructions. This study has a twofold goal. First, it provides a reliable result obtained from the exhaustive examination of 6600 adjectival predicates, instead of reporting typical complement types or crossing relations between arguments based on a limited number of examples. About 17% of Korean adjectives have been revealed licensing TAC relations. Second, the TAC relations, distinguished from other syntactic alternations, are empirically discerned and classified into four sub-types: IS-SYM, IS-CRT, DS-LOC and DS-PSY types. The first three types of the TAC relations are also observed in verbal constructions, whereas the last type seems exclusive to adjectival constructions. On the ground of the current study on adjectives, a full-scale study on verbal constructions licensing crossing relations between two arguments would be conducted in future works and therefore, a theoretical assumption may be elaborated on the basis of a solid linguistic reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] -Er deverbal Ns are analyzed as derived either from a verbal base or from a root. [•] A typology of -er Ns including episodic/dispositional/instrument Ns is proposed. [•] Internal event properties of -er Ns are demonstrated with adjectival modification. [•] The correlation between event reading and argument structure is retained. [•] (Non)specificity in internal arguments leads to an underlying episodic/generic event. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article describes two experiments linking native-language grammar rules with implications for perception of similarity and recognition memory. In prenominal languages (e.g., English), adjectives usually precede nouns, whereas in postnominal languages (e.g., Portuguese), nouns usually precede adjectives. We explored the influence of such rules upon similarity judgments about, and recognition of, objects with multiple category attributes (one nominal attribute and one adjectival attribute). The results supported the hypothesized primacy effect of native-language word order such that nouns generally carried more weight for Portuguese speakers than for English speakers. This pattern was observed for judgments of similarity (i.e., Portuguese speakers tended to judge objects that shared a noun-designated attribute as more similar than did English speakers), as well as for false alarms in recognition memory (i.e., Portuguese speakers tended to falsely recognize more objects if they possessed a familiar noun attribute, relative to English speakers). The implications of such linguistic effects for the cognition of similarity and memory are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Most research on complement realisation has been concerned with verbs. [•] The article investigates the neglected area of adjectival valency. [•] The data consist of 181 polyvalent adjectives occurring in 956 patterns. [•] Predictability and the aspectual- and the causal approaches to complement realisation are assessed. [•] The findings support the view that valency belongs to the idiosyncratic aspects of language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the acquisition of syntax in L2 grammars. We tested adult L2 speakers of Spanish (English L1) on the feature specification of T(ense), which is different in English and Spanish in so-called subject-to-subject raising structures. We present experimental results with the verb parecer “to seem/to appear” in different tenses, with and without experiencers, and with Tense Phrase (TP), verb phrase (vP) and Adjectival Phrase (AP) complements. The results show that advanced L2 learners can perform just like native Spanish speakers regarding grammatical knowledge in this domain, although the subtle differences between both languages are not explicitly taught. We argue that these results support Full Access approaches to Universal Grammar (UG) in L2 acquisition, by providing evidence that uninterpretable syntactic features can be learned in adult L2, even when such features are not directly instantiated in the same grammatical domain in the L1 grammar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This study discusses how seven of Levin's (1993) entity-specific change-of-state verbs (i.e. bloom, blossom, flower, germinate, sprout, swell, and blister) are subsumed into the intransitive resultative construction by highlighting and making use of the external and internal constraints proposed by the Lexical Constructional Model (LCM; Ruiz de Mendoza and Mairal 2007). External constraints refer to cognitive mechanisms, such as high-level metaphor and/or metonymy whereas internal constraints are concerned with the encyclopedic and event structure makeup of verbs. The Internal Variable Conditioning constraint is at work when the information encapsulated by a predicate determines the choice of the Z element in an intransitive resultative construction. The semantic makeup of the verb swell and the entity undergoing swelling constrain the nature of the resultant entity Z which must be bigger in size or have a bigger value than the Y element (e.g. The work, which was originally meant to consist only of a few sheets, swelled into ten volumes). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to identify the primary adjectives of Old English as well as to gather the derivational paradigms that revolve around them. All in all, 459 primary adjectives are identified, which function as the base of 6,587 derivatives. Two conclusions are drawn from the analysis. In the first place, the concept of derivational paradigm contributes to the explanation of the overall organization of the lexicon, while allowing for the discussion of questions that are at the core of current morphological theory, such as recursivity and productivity. Secondly, that primary adjectives play a significant role in Old English derivation. Even though they are not as productive as strong verbs, primary adjectives function as base of derivation for a significant number of non-basic terms, which, moreover, belong to all lexical categories and nearly all grammatical classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The graphic or scriptural environment of Cameroon is experiencing a process of hispanization through Spanish words and expressions. These imported words name spaces, structures and institutions. It seems that the authors of that practice do escape from the heavy socioeconomic reality they are faced with since the decade of ninety. The evasion consists of several ways. It is spatial when foreign toponyms are transposed into Cameroon context and temporal when glorious and idyllic moments of the past are brought into mind. However, escapism can be carried out through rewarding adjectives or the designation of purely positive realities. Consequently, Cameroonians use symbolic concepts like goodness, friendship, divinity, etc. in order to, according to dream or visceral wish, make positive their daily life and get out of the generalized crisis. The aim of this paper consists in analyzing that phenomenon on the basis of collected data from Cameroon towns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with non-native speakers' perception of the structure of antonymy in English. It concentrates on the notion of canonical antonyms - conventionalized pairs of words with contrastive meaning. To compare the perception of native and non-native speakers, the elicitation experiment designed by Paradis, Willners, and Jones is used. The results suggest that the nature of antonymy in English is perceived in the same way by both native and non-native speakers. Moreover, the set of adjectival canonical antonyms is very similar for both studied groups, while certain differences can be observed in the group of less strongly related antonyms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I discuss Ancient Greek constructions consisting of a form of the verb eimi 'I am' and a present, perfect or aorist participle. In particular, I focus on those uses where the participle is said to have an "adjectival" function. My main goal is to provide a unified semantic description of this phenomenon, adopting a cognitive framework. I show that adjectival periphrasis typically involves the predication of properties, which can be characterized in terms of low transitivity (Hopper & Thompson, 1980). I furthermore argue that a so-called "property reading" involves a particular kind of conceptual integration, whereby only one component state of the verb eimi is elaborated by the participle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese reduplicated adjectives denote a perceptible state realized from the property denoted by the adjectival base. The 'degree' conveyed by reduplicated adjectives is the by-product of state realization and can be interpreted as the positive degree. A gradable adjective denoting a property that is more perceptible to human sense is more amenable to reduplication, and the rhetorical style of parallelism can make the property denoted by adjectives more perceptible. The gradability requirement on adjectives amenable to reduplication results from the perceptibility requirement on the state denoted by reduplicated adjectives. Depending on the means by which the property denoted by their adjectival base is realized as a state, reduplicated adjectives can be divided into two types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to describe the differences between à la mode de (SN) 'in the fashion of ' and à la mode 'fashionable'. These two constructions are characterised by the fact that in the first one, the noun mode must be modified by a prepositional phrase, an adjective or a relative clause, whereas in the second one, modification is impossible. In contemporary French, these constructions appear in different syntactic contexts : à la mode de (SN) works both as an adjectival or a verbal modifier, whereas à la mode behaves as an adjectival modifier only. Though à la mode first appears as an ellipsis of à la mode de (SN), the noun mode has different meanings in these two constructions : it must be understood with its ancient meaning of 'manner' in the first case, but with a more recent meaning of 'fashion' in the second one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]