Adjectives Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

As an introduction to the special issue, this paper presents an overview of previous corpus linguistic work in the field of language and sexuality and discusses the compatibility of corpus linguistic methodology with queer linguistics as a central theoretical approach in language and sexuality studies. The discussion is structured around five prototypical aspects of corpus linguistics that may be deemed problematic from a poststructuralist, queer linguistic perspective: quantification and associated notions of objectivity, reliance on linguistic forms and formal presence, concentration on highly frequent features, reliance on categories, and highlighting of differences. It is argued that none of these aspects rules out an application of corpus linguistic techniques within queer theoretically informed linguistic work per se and that it is rather the way these techniques are employed that can be seen as more or less compatible with queer linguistics. To complement the theoretical discussion, a collocation analysis of sexual descriptive adjectives in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) is conducted in an attempt to address some of the issues raised. The concluding section makes suggestions for future research.
Keywords: corpus linguistics, language and sexuality, queer linguistics, sexual descriptive adjectives, methodology, collocation

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- Language and Gender, Corpus Linguistics, Sexual Identity, Language and Sexuality
- by Galit Sassoon
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- Cognitive Science, Languages and Linguistics, Pragmatics, Semantics

There have been linguistic studies on the gendering mechanisms of adjectives and psychological studies on the relationship between personality traits and gender, but the two fields have never entered into a dialogue on these issues. This article seeks to address this gap by presenting an interdisciplinary study that explores the gendering mechanisms associated with personality traits and personality trait-denoting adjectives. The findings of earlier work in this area and basic gendering mechanisms relevant to adjectives and personality traits are outlined. This is followed by a linguistic and a psychological analysis of the usage patterns of a set of personality trait adjectives. The linguistic section draws on corpus linguistics to explore the distribution of these adjectives with female, male and gender-neutral personal nouns in the Corpus of Contemporary American English. The psychological analysis relates the usage frequencies of personality trait adjectives with the nouns man, woman and person in the Google Books corpus to desirability ratings of the adjectives.

- by Heiko Motschenbacher
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- Personality Psychology, Language and Gender, Corpus Linguistics, Adjectives

Focus sensitive operators (like only, also and even) are usually taken to operate on focus alternatives to their prejacent and, more specifically, on a contextually restricted set of propositions (‘C’) which are identical to the prejacent p, except from the focused element, which is replaced by a distinct element of the same semantic type (Rooth 1985, 1992). I will call such standard (or ‘Roothian’) alternatives, external alternatives.
The main goal of this paper is to examine cases where a focus sensitive expression can also operate on another type of alternatives, which I will call ‘internal’ alternatives. Intuitively, such alternatives are not alternatives to p, but rather alternative interpretational versions of p. That is, with internal alternatives, the focused element is not replaced by a distinct element (of the same semantic type), but rather with an identical element with a distinct interpretation. Thus, the overt material in p and the propositions in the set of internal alternatives is identical, and the difference only lies in the interpretation given to covert material in p.
More formally, I will propose that in the case of ‘internal’ altenatives the alternatives to the prejacnet are derived by assigning a covert variable in the focused element a distinct value. Depending on the semantics of the associate, this covert variable can be a standard variable (with gradable expressions), a covert quantifier, a domain restriction variable, a precision standard variable, etc.
The main operator I will analyze in this respect is the Hebrew 'bixlal' (cf. Migron 2003, Greenberg & Khrizman 2012). I will claim that it is an 'even-like operator, which unlike the standard 'even' (and the Hebrew 'afilu') can operate on such 'internal alternatives.

This article investigates prototypically attributive versus predicative adjectives in English in terms of the phonological properties that have been associated especially with nouns versus verbs in a substantial body of psycholinguistic research (e.g. Kelly 1992) – often ignored in theoretical linguistic work on word classes. Inspired by Berg's (2000, 2009) ‘cross-level harmony constraint’, the hypothesis I test is that prototypically attributive adjectives not only align more with nouns than with verbs syntactically, semantically and pragmatically, but also phonologically – and likewise for prototypically predicative adjectives and verbs. I analyse the phonological structure of frequent adjectives from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), and show that the data do indeed support the hypothesis. Berg's ‘cross-level harmony constraint’ may thus apply not only to the entire word classes noun, verb and adjective, but also to these two adjectival subclasses. I dis...

- by Willem B Hollmann
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- Psychology, Phonology, Language Acquisition, Psycholinguistics

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.

- by Bianca Basciano
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- Language Teaching, Chinese, Adjectives
- by Bert Cappelle
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- Morphology, Dutch, Adverbs, Adjectives

study of english language. study of institut or university

- by Arif Ariza
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- Relative Clauses, Adjectives, Adjective Clause and Relative Pronoun, Klausa

+ lists of adjectives and adverbs

В статье рассматриваются основные проблемы, связанные с категориальным статусом прилагательных во внутриязыковом и типологическом аспекте.
Обсуждаются основные семантические противопоставления в системе признаковой лексики, выявляются грамматические категории, характерные для прилагательных, делаются обобщения о дистрибуции этой синтаксической категории. Отдельному рассмотрению подвергается структурная позиция одиночных
и ветвящихся прилагательных в именной группе.

- by Pavel Grashchenkov and +1
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- Nominal Predication, Adjectives, Comparatives, Attributive Adjective

There is a strand of work in the Austronesian literature claiming that the syntactic category distinctions familiar from Indo-European are lacking in certain languages belonging to this family. On the other hand, Baker (2005) claims that the categories noun, verb and adjective are represented in the grammars of all languages. This paper contributes to this debate, taking Fijian adjectives as a case study. In Fijian, putative adjectives can occur with person, number and tense morphology, making one suspect that they are in fact stative verbs, as various researchers have suggested for this and other members of the Oceanic branch. We show that despite appearances, ‘adjective’ is a member of Fijian’s inventory of syntactic categories. This finding suggests that the ability to combine with person, number and tense markers is not a good diagnostic for verb-hood. This in turn casts doubt on claims that a given language lacks adjectives that are based on this test, opening the possibility that the category ‘adjective’ may indeed be universal.

- by Hazel Pearson
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- Syntax/Semantics, Austronesian Languages, Syntax, Linguistics
- by Yoshikata Shibuya
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- Adjectives
- by Halid Bulić
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- Syntax, Morphology, Morphology and Syntax, Adjectives

The placement of French adjectives has long been both controversial and misconstrued within the literature. In this Romance language, postnominal adjectives are considered to be the rule rather than the exception (Alexaidou, 2007). Within this paper, the semantic and syntactic underpinnings of prenominal and postnominal adjectives will be discussed in relation to theoretical and descriptive data. Semantic structures attempt to classify adjective placement. However, data indicate greater flexibility and ambiguity in placement than what has been previously understood (Thuilier, 2013). Within Branching Direction Theory (Song, 2012), noun movement up the syntactic tree with pied-piping and snowballing movement will join with the mirror image adjective orderings developed within semantic theory (Cinque, 1994; Laenzlinger, 2005). While current theory attempts to describe these phenomena, many issues are yet to be resolved. Do to the recent growth in Optimality Theory (Song, 2012), there is hope that elegant, more fully explanatory theories can be developed. Overall, within Universal Grammar’s framework (Chomsky, 1986), the variation in adjective placement in French and within human language is the basis for the research developed within this paper.

Against the maximizing conception of practical rationality, Michael Slote has argued that rationality does not always require choosing what is most rational. Instead, it can sometimes be rational to do something that is less than fully rational. In this paper, I will argue that maximizers have a ready response to Slote's position. Roy Sorensen has argued that 'rational' is an absolute term, suggesting that it is not possible to be rational without being completely rational. Sorensen's view is confirmed by the fact that, by the lights of contemporary linguistics, 'rational' is an absolute gradable adjective. Because 'rational' is an absolute gradable adjective, being rational requires being at the top of the scale of rationality, making anyone who is not fully rational positively irrational. Contra Slote, the only way to be rational enough is to be maximally rational.

The Ainu (Southern Hokkaido) relative clause construction is built on the model
of the nominal attributive construction, while the noun-complement construction is based on that of the nominal possessive construction in which the head
is marked with a possessive suffix. Also, relative and noun-complement clauses
behave differently with regard to island violation constraints: only the latter
allow such violations. However, there is a small number of noun-complement
clauses without possessive marking on the perception/relational head noun,
which makes them look like relative clauses; these are the so-called emergent
GNMCCs. I suggest that these head nouns appear in non-possessive form in order to dissociate themselves from the few homonymous possessive heads which
are grammaticalized as modal/evidential markers in the relevant constructions.

- by Anna Bugaeva
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- Japanese Studies, Languages and Linguistics, Syntax, Japanese
- by Zoran Božič
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- Didactics, Pronouns, Adjectives, Grammar
- by Manuela Gonzaga
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- Adjectives, European Portuguese, Noun Phrase, Possessives

One of the oldest concerns in linguistic theory is the characterization of grammatical categories, and the problem of how to capture their similarities and differences. Perhaps one of the most problematic cases identified in previous studies has been to find a non-parochial characterization of the relation between adjectives and verbs; participles are at the centre of the problem, because they show mixed morphosyntactic and semantic properties that connect them both with adjectives and verbs. The aim of this contribution is to summarize the main results and pending questions that the literature has identified in the study of the relation between adjectives, participles and verbs. We concentrate on two problems: their argument structure and their aspectual properties.

- by Rafael Marín
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- Lexical Semantics, Tense and Aspect Systems, Formal Semantics, Argument Structure
- by Yoshikata Shibuya
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- Adjectives
- by Antonio Fábregas
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- Adjectives, Relational Adjectives, Agreement, Bracketing Paradoxes

Второй выпуск альманаха продолжает публикацию статей и материалов, относящихся к различным разделам уралистики. В работах освещаются общие вопросы уралистики, вопросы фонетики, грамматики и лексикологии различных языков уральской семьи. В ряде статей анализируются проблемы фольклористики, литературоведения и истории. Определенное место в альманахе занимают публикации языковых материалов, научная полемика и дискуссии.
Альманах предназначен для специалистов по финно-угорским и самодийским языкам, может быть интересен широкому кругу читателей-носителей уральских языков.

- by Сергей Мызников and +2
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- Mythology And Folklore, Folklore, Historical Archaeology, Languages and Linguistics

In this paper I discuss two types of adjectival modification in Polish, namely the semantics of prenominal and postnominal adjectives. I discuss different entailment patterns related to the placement of adjectival modifiers and the relation between adjectives in both positions and genericity. I postulate a unified intersective semantics for both prenominal and postnominal adjectives and argue that they are predicates denoting properties of objects and kinds respectively. I posit that the kind area is associated with the NP and in the process of semantic composition nouns first combine with postnominal modifiers and then with prenominal ones. The proposal is based on the syntactic analysis of Rutkowski and Progovac (2005) and the semantic framework of McNally and Boleda (2004).

- by Marcin Wągiel
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- Languages and Linguistics, Semantics, Slavic Languages, Linguistics
- by Isabelle Roy
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- Predication, Adjectives, Nominalization, Intersective Reading
- by Daria Ryzhova
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- Lexical Semantics, Adjectives

In this thesis, I propose that the distribution of nominal phrases is constrained by the relative positions of phi-features that nominal phrases contain. More specifically, I propose a condition according to which two syntactic nodes bearing visible phi-features cannot be directly merged. This constraint results in the well-described generalization according to which Agreement is severely limited in the Nominal Domain and complements to nominals may not bear direct case-marking, unlike the complements of verbs and prepositions. Next, I suggest that the propagation of phi-features can be blocked by a formal feature – epsilon – that is borne on such morphemes as prepositions and linkers, as well as oblique case markers. A nominal phrase merged with an epsilon may combine with another nominal phrase when a bare nominal phrase may not. Next, I argue that the syntactic identity of nouns can be fully reduced to phi-features. The proposed approach is shown to extend to adjectives – another category whose syntactic behavior is largely determined by the presence of phi-features. To that effect, I show that the ban on direct marking of the complements of both adjectives and nouns can be understood as a constraint on the merger of two phi-bearing structures. I show how the proposed theory can account for several well known syntactic phenomena, including the ban on double Absolutives in Ergative languages and the lack of Structural Dative marking in the Nominal Domain. The empirical data is mainly drawn from Slavic, Romance, Germanic and Iranian languages of the Indo-European family and from Nakh-Dagestanian languages.

- by Philip Shushurin
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- Syntax, Syntactic Theory, Iranian Languages, Ergativity
- by Nuria Rodriguez Pedreira
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- Adjectives, Relational Adjectives
- by Soner Akşehirli
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- Adjectives, Adjectives Ordering Restrictions

U ovome se radu analiziraju dosadašnje klasifikacije pridjeva u bosanskom jeziku i predlažu se neke nove klasifikacije. Pokazuje se da su dosadašnje klasifikacije, koje su se uglavnom zasnivale na značenju, nedosljedne, da nisu dovoljno precizne i nisu naročito korisne za opis gramatičkog ponašanja pridjeva. Klasifikacije koje se predlažu u ovom radu zasnivaju se na morfološkim i sintaksičkim osobinama pridjeva.

- by Halid Bulić
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- Bosnian, Syntax, Morphosyntax, Morphology
- by Antonio Fábregas
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- Locality, Distributed Morphology, Conversion, Adjectives

This paper discusses the semantics and syntax of the “unmarked positive form” of gradable adjectives in Chinese. Unlike in English, in which the positive forms do not have any overt degree morphology, in Chinese the degree morphology is obligatory in a stand-alone sentence. On the other hand, the degree morpheme is not required in many other constructions, e.g. negation, questions, contrasts. There seems to be no obvious reason for the asymmetrical distribution of the degree morpheme in Chinese. However, I argue that the seemingly puzzling syntactic distribution of the degree morpheme in Chinese is related to the special nature of Chinese adjectives, which are considered static intransitive verbs by some linguists. Just as sentences with verbal predicates need aspectual specification to make it “finite”, adjectives need to be pinned down “aspectually” as well. Degree morphemes serve as an aspectual marker for adjectives in stand-alone sentences. Naturally in other constructions like negation, questions, and contrasts, such aspectual requirement must have been satisfied somehow.

- by Hongyuan Dong
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- Tense and Aspect Systems, Adjectives

Are there languages without adjectives?

- by Johny Varsami
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- International Relations, Chinese linguistics, Linguistics, Eskimo-Aleut Linguistics
- by Heike Necker
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- LFG, Italian, Adjectives, Derivational Morphology

En la lingüística se destacan pocos temas que quedan sin descrip-ción empírica y que se definen, por lo tanto, como un tipo de "terra incognita" por explorar. Uno de los objetivos principales del presente artículo es demostrar que el llamado fenómeno del "spanglish" se puede considerar como tal 1. Dado el número cre-ciente de artículos y libros que se han dedicado al fenómeno en las últimas décadas, esta afirmación puede parecer contra-intui-tiva. Sin embargo, se basa en la observación de tendencias nota-bles en la literatura. De hecho, la bibliografía del spanglish se orienta ante todo hacia una serie de puntos de debate concer-niente la definición del propio fenómeno (Betti y Enghels 2018): (a) actitudes positivas y negativas: el spanglish como amenaza al futuro del español y del inglés en los Estados Unidos (Baron 1990) versus el spanglish como medio comunicativo dinámico (Stavans 2008); (b) la terminología: "spanglish" (Betti 2008) versus "espanglish" (Marcos-Marín 2001) o "español popular de los estados unidos" (Otheguy 2009); (c) su estatuto lingüístico: span-glish como lengua (Álvarez Martínez 2008), dialecto (López García-Molins 2015) u otra modalidad comunicativa (Hernán-dez-Sancristán 2015). Además, el spanglish se ha considerado como un campo de investigación altamente significativo para una mejor comprensión de los problemas sociales, políticos y cultu-rales inherentes a la sociedad norteamericana (véanse por ejem-plo Betti 2008, Stavans 2008 entre otros muchos). 1 El propio término de "spanglish" ha sido sujeto de mucha discusión, como será comentado más abajo. Sin embargo, preferimos este término a otros alternativos (como "español popular de los EE.UU.") porque mejor capta el carácter híbrido del fenómeno.

- by Renata Enghels
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- Spanish, English, Language contact, Adjectives
- by Laura Clarissa Katigbak
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- Morphosyntax, Linguistics, Adjectives, Philippine Languages