Adjectives: Formal Analyses in Syntax and Semantics

✍ Scribed by Patricia Cabredo Hofherr (ed.), Ora Matushansky (ed.)

• Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 349
• Series: Linguistik aktuell / Linguistics Today 153
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Adjectives are comparatively less well studied than the lexical categories of nouns and verbs. The present volume brings together studies in the syntax and semantics of adjectives. Four of the contributions investigate the syntax of adjectives in a variety of languages (English, French, Mandarin Chinese, Modern Hebrew, Russian, Spanish, and Serbocroatian). The theoretical issues explored include: the syntax of attributive and predicative adjectives, the syntax of nominalized adjectives and the identification of adjectives as a distinct lexical category in Mandarin Chinese. A further four contributions examine different aspects in the semantics of adjectives in English, French, and Spanish, dealing with superlatives, comparatives, and aspect in adjectives. This volume will be of interest to researchers and students in syntax, formal semantics, and language typology.

✦ Table of Contents

Content: Adjectives: an introduction / Patricia Cabredo Hofherr --
Syntactic positions of attributive adjectives / Nadira Aljović --
The Syntactic differences between long and short forms of Russian adjectives / Leonard H. Babby --
The name of the adjective / Hagit Borer & Isabelle Roy --
Adjectives in Mandarin Chinese: The rehabilitation of a much ostracized category / Waltraud Paul --
Comparisons of similarity and difference / Peter Alrenga --
Characterizing superlative quantifiers / Javier Gutiérrez-Rexach --
Superlative adjectives and the licensing of non-modal infinitival subject relatives / Petra Sleeman --
Sentential complementation of adjectives in French / Catherine Léger --
Spanish adjectives within bounds / Rafael Marín.