This volume brings together seven eminently original attempts to answer a sorely neglected question: What are adjectives? Although the positioning of adjectives as well as aspects of their semantics have been investigated in depth, their actual status as a lexical category has generally been treated superficially in the linguistic literature. In this volume, the different approaches to the categorial identity of adjectives put forward include their position in the inventory of lexical categories, the elusive noun-adjective link, the functional entourage of adjectives and their relational character, the role of concord and possession – and so on. The contributors bring different viewpoints as well as a variety of language data into the discussion, from Chinese to Indo-European, and on to Niger-Congo languages.

This volume brings together seven eminently original attempts to answer a sorely neglected question: What are adjectives? Although the positioning of adjectives as well as aspects of their semantics have been investigated in depth, their actual status as a lexical category has generally been treated superficially in the linguistic literature. In this volume, the different approaches to the categorial identity of adjectives put forward include their position in the inventory of lexical categories, the elusive noun-adjective link, the functional entourage of adjectives and their relational character, the role of concord and possession - and so on. The contributors bring different viewpoints as well as a variety of language data into the discussion, from Chinese to Indo-European, and on to Niger-Congo languages.

Table of contents

An accessible guide to the linguistic semantics of adjectives, adverbs, gradability, vagueness, comparatives, and modification more generally.

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.

This monograph sets out (i) to establish criteria for differentiating adjectives from other word-classes for languages in which they form a distinct category, and (ii) to establish criteria for determining their (non-)identity with words from other categories for languages in which they do not. As languages show various gradations in the extent to which adjectives can be distinguished from other word-classes, the author discusses idealized language types, thereby providing a model for the analysis of natural languages.The book argues that adjectives do not uniformly show all differentiating characteristics and that these characteristics are semantically relevant and functionally motivated: for instance, when word-classes are used in functions not their own, they manifest characteristics of the categories to which the relevant functions belong.The second part of the book discusses three distinct idealized languages types without a distinct adjectival category in which “property words” remain undifferentiated from (i) nouns, (ii) verbs, and (iii) nouns as well as verbs. These three types are shwon to represent gradations of distinctions between word-classes as they occur in natural languages and to manifest various degrees of the corresponding functional neutralizations.In the final chapter the wider theoretical implications of this work for the study of categories are discussed.

Topics in English Linguistics Bernd Kortmann, University of Freiburg Elizabeth Closs Traugott, Stanford University The future of English linguistics as envisaged by the editors of Topics in English Linguistics lies in empirical studies which integrate work in English linguistics into general and theoretical linguistics on the one hand, and comparative linguistics on the other. The TiEL series features volumes that present interesting new data and analyses, and above all fresh approaches that contribute to the overall aim of the series, which is to further outstanding research in English linguistics. English Adjectives Of Comparison Tine Breban, K.U. Leuven The book is concerned with a largely unrecognized grammaticalization process: deictification, or the development from quality-attributing to deictically used adjectives in the English noun phrase. On the basis of the synchronic and diachronic corpus-study of six English adjectives of comparison, deictification is shown to involve unstudied variants of subjectification and decategorialization.