Pullum_geoffrey_k_a_student_s_introduction

guish adjectives from nouns, especially when taken together with the properties of nouns presented in Ch. 5, § 1 .

In this section we pick out a selection of the most decisive properties that do dis­ tinguish between nouns and adjectives. We use judge, size, and silk as examples of words that occur as nouns but not as adjectives, and wise, big, and smooth as exam­ ples of words that occur as adjectives but not as nouns.

(a) Inflection

Nouns typically have plural inflected forms; adjectives (in English) never do. Conversely, many adjectives have comparative and superlative inflected forms, but no nouns do:

Not all nouns have plural forms and not all adjectives have comparative and superla­ tive forms, but where the forms do exist the difference between nouns and adjectives is particularly clear.

(b) Determiners

Nouns take determiners as dependent but adjectives do not. Some of the determi­ natives that function as determiner in NP structure, however, can also function as modifier in AdjP structure, so in applying this test we need to select items which cannot modify adjectives. This can be done by picking genitives, or the determina­ tives which and some:

(c) Modifiers

Nouns and adjectives take different kinds of modifiers. Most importantly, NOUNS TAKE ADJECTIVES as modifier, but adjectives don't normally take other adjectives as modifier. Adjectives most often take adverbs. There are enormous numbers of adjective-adverb pairs that differjust by the presence of the suffix ·ly on the adverb, as in remarkable vs remarkably, and in those cases it is the word without the ·ly that modifies a following noun, and the one with ·ly that modifies a following adjective, as the examples in [6] show:

Switching adjectives and adverbs makes ungrammatical phrases in every case: *a remarkablyjudge, *remarkable wise, etc.

Less obvious, however, is the construction in [iii] with its special interpretation. In most cases, nevertheless, the form in the special construction can be clearly iden­ tified as an adjective.

.. This is shown first of all by the modifier test: the extremely rich provides evi­ dence that rich is an adjective because it is preceded by a modifying adverb (a noun would be modified by an adjective).

•Notice also that in this special fused modifier-head use, the only determiner per­ mitted is the - a person who is rich can't be referred to as *a rich or *some rich. And although the NP the rich is plural (hence the verb agreement in The rich are the beneficiaries), it doesn't have plural inflection on rich - two rich people can't be referred to as *two riches. Rich thus behaves very differently from a noun.

Overall, there is strong evidence that the rich in [9iii] contains an adjective but no noun.

The properties given in § 1 . 1 together with those presented in Ch. 3, § I for the verb enable us to distinguish adjectives from verbs in a similar way. We'll apply a selection of the most decisive properties to distinguish the adjectives fond, sad, appreciative from the verbs love, regret, enjoy.

(a) Inflection and grade

Verbs have a richer system of inflection than any of the other parts of speech. Most distinctive are the preterite and 3rd person singular forms. As already mentioned, comparative and superlative inflection is found with adjectives but not verbs. We illustrate in [ 1 0] with preterite and comparative forms:

The asterisks in rib] mark impossible comparative forms (lover is of course estab­ lished in a quite different sense as a noun, but the point here is that it's not the com­ parative of love). We wouldn't expect a comparative inflectional form for apprecia­ tive, because adjectives of this length don't take grade inflection, but even with appreciative there is a comparative marked by more. And that suffices to distinguish it from a verb, since when more combines with a verb it doesn't precede it:

(b) Modifiers

Unlike nouns, verbs take largely the same modifiers as adjectives: compare Kim loved Pat immensely and Kim was immensely fond of Pat. Nevertheless there are some adverbs that can modify adjectives but not verbs. They include very;pretty, in

drawn as those between adjectives and nouns or adjectives and verbs. Nevertheless, the definite article the and the indefinite article a differ strikingly from prototypical adjectives with respect to both syntax and meaning:

;;> The articles can be obligatory: in most cases NPs with a count singular noun as head must have some kind of determinative, so in The dog barked or A dog barked, the article is required: *Dog barked is not grammatical.

"The articles are non-gradable.

"The articles cannot be used predicatively.

. The articles serve to mark the NP as definite or indefinite rather than denoting some property of the referent.

Other items can then be assigned to the determinative category by virtue of hav­ ing one or more of the following properties:

[ 1 5] i They don't occur with articles, and articles don't occur with them.

iiThey can occur as the only pre-head dependent of a count singular noun.

iiiThey can occur as fused head in a partitive construction.

The examples in [ 1 6] show how these properties distinguish the determinative some from the adjective good:

In [i], [a] is inadmissible because some cannot follow the.

In [ii], guy is a count singular noun and requires a determiner, such as some.

In [iii] some is fused head with a partitive complement, a construction which does not admit adjectives except for comparative and superlatives (theyoungerof the two, the best of the lot).

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tive forms and take degree modifiers such as very, too ("excessively") and pretty. Adjectives of this kind are said to be gradable. They denote scalar properties that can apply in varying degrees. Good, old, big and so on denote properties of this kind - and one can ask about the degree to which the property applies with how: How big is it?, etc.

Not all adjectives are of this kind. There are also non-gradable adjectives, as in an alphabetical list. It makes no sense to ask how alphabetical a list is, or to say that one list is more alphabetical than another. Alphabetical thus denotes a non-scalar property. Other examples of non-gradable adjectives are seen in [ 1 7] :

Some adjectives can be used in either way: like the distinction between count and non-count in nouns, the gradable vs non-gradable distinction applies to uses rather than lexemes as such. Compare:

Typically, as in these examples, the non-gradable sense is the basic one, with the gradable sense representing an extended use.

An AdjP consists of an adjective as head, alone or accompanied by one or more dependents. The dependents may be complements, licensed by the head, or modifiers, less restricted in their occurrence.

(a) Complements

The complements are almost always PPs, as in [ 1 9], or subordinate clauses, as in [20] :

The choice of preposition in [ 1 9] depends on the head adjective: we couldn't have, for example, *afraid on the dark or *bent of revenge. With certain adjec­ tives (in particular senses) the PP is obligatory: the sense of bent shown here, for

1 20 Chapter 6 Adjectives and adverbs

Although most adjectives can be used both attributively and predicatively, there are nevertheless many that are restricted to one or other of these two uses:

Huge illustrates the default case, where the adjective appears both attributively and predicatively.

Utter is an exceptional case: an attributive-only adjective, which can't be used predicatively (as shown in [iib)).

Asleep is the opposite kind of exception, as evident from [iii] ; it can occur pred­ icatively but not attributively: it is a never-attributive adjective.

(a) Attributive-only adjectives

NPs containing a sample ofother adjectives that are attributive-only are given in [25]:

(b) Never-attributive adjectives

Here are some further examples of predicative uses of never-attributive adjectives:

Restrictions may apply to senses rather than lexemes

As with the gradable vs non-gradable distinction, the restrictions often apply just to certain senses of a lexeme. In [27], for example, it is ONLY IN THE SENSES ILLUSTRATED that the underlined adjectives in [i] are attributive-only, and those in [ii] never-attributive:

Structural restrictions on attributive adjectives

Attributive AdjPs mostly cannot contain dependents that follow the head. The typi­ cal case is as in [28], where the underlined adjective licenses a post-head dependent (double-underlined), and the AdjP is allowed only predicatively as in the [a] cases, not attributively as in the [b] cases.

There are a few post-head dependents that can occur with attributive adjectives, though, as seen in [29] .

Enough is allowed quite generally after gradable adjectives, as in [i] .

Than expected in [iib] is a short comparative complement that is permitted within an attributive AdjP.

A longer phrase would have to be located after the head noun, as in [iiib], where it functions as indirect complement (see Ch. 5, §4).

1 .9 Other functions ofAdjPs

Besides the two major functions discussed above, there are two rela­ tively minor functions in which adjectives and AdjPs are found.

(a) Postpositives

Postpositive adjectives function in NP structure as post-head internal modifier. There are three cases to consider:

The examples in [i] have fused determiner-heads, making it impossible for the adjectives to occur in the usual pre-head position - compare everything useful with every useful thing.

The modifiers in [ii] would be inadmissible in pre-head position because the adjec­ tive has its own post-head dependents; the postpositive construction provides a way of getting around the fact that such AdjPs cannot be used as attributive modifiers. A limited number of adjectives can occur postpositively without their own dependents and with a non-fused head noun, as in [iii] : possible can also be attributive whereas asleep (as we have seen) cannot. Elect (meaning "recently elected but not in office yet") is one of a very small number of exceptional adjec­ tives that occur only postpositively.

(b) External modifiers

Certain forms of AdjP occur right at the beginning of the NP, before the indefinite article a: