Adjectival Modification and Order Restrictions: The Influence of Temporariness on Prenominal Word Order 9783110478457, 9783110476385

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Sven Kotowski Adjectival Modification and Order Restrictions

studia grammatica 80

Herausgegeben von Manfred Bierwisch, Hans-Martin Gärtner und Manfred Krifka unter Mitwirkung von Regine Eckardt (Göttingen), Paul Kiparsky (Stanford)

Sven Kotowski

Adjectival Modification and Order Restrictions

The Influence of Temporariness on Prenominal Word Order

Zugl.: Universität Kassel, Dissertation Autor: Sven Kotowski Fachbereich 02 – Geistes- und Kulturwissenschaften Tag der Disputation: 28. Oktober 2015

ISBN 978-3-11-047638-5 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-047845-7 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-047646-0 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. 6 2016 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Typesetting: RoyalStandard, Hong Kong Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

Table of contents Acknowledgments vii viii List of Tables ix List of Figures x Abbreviations 1 Introduction 1 1.1 1.1.1 1.1.2 1.2 1.2.1 1.2.2 1.3

10 The word class ‘adjective’ 11 Cross-linguistic and language-specific 11 Cross-linguistic perspectives 19 Language-specific perspectives Semantics and subclassification of adjectives 23 Two dichotomies 36 Adjective typologies and modification 66 Chapter summary

2 2.1 2.1.1 2.1.2 2.2 2.2.1 2.2.2 2.3 2.3.1 2.3.2 2.4

68 Individual-level, stage-level, and temporariness 70 Data and Theories for the IL-SL-contrast 71 Diagnostics 85 Some notes on major theoretical accounts 89 Lexical aspect and temporariness 89 Adjectival aspect and the Vendler-classification 98 Temporariness and IL-SL 103 What kind of adjectives are typical SLs? 104 Typical SLs are absolute gradable adjectives 105 Conjectures on the (partial) absolute-SL-coincidence 109 Chapter summary

3

Adjective order restrictions, adjective classes, and property concepts 111 in DP 114 Quality adjectives and DP structure 120 Adjective order restrictions 122 Preliminaries and scope of investigation 131 AORs in the narrow sense 155 Corpus-study 155 Rationale 161 Search procedure 162 Yield and data cleansing 163 Results

3.1 3.2 3.2.1 3.2.2 3.3 3.3.1 3.3.2 3.3.3 3.3.4

23

vi 3.3.5 3.4 3.4.1 3.4.2 3.4.3 3.4.4 3.4.5 3.5 4 4.1 4.1.1 4.1.2 4.1.3 4.1.4 4.2 4.2.1 4.2.2 4.2.3 4.3 4.3.1 4.3.2 4.3.3 4.3.4 4.3.5 4.4

Table of contents

Discussion 170 172 Questionnaire study I 172 Rationale 173 Participants and set-up 174 Items and hypotheses 180 Results 183 Discussion Chapter summary and assessment

186

189 Layered adjective order and genericity 189 Modifiers applying to kinds 189 Genericity 191 Well-establishedness 195 Concepts and kinds 197 The structural position of kind modifiers 200 The two-layered approach in Cinque and Larson 200 Data 203 The theory according to Larson and Cinque 206 Challenges to the two-layer system 215 Questionnaire study II 215 Rationale 216 Participants and set-up 217 Items and hypotheses 221 Results 225 Discussion 229 Chapter summary

230 Conclusion 234 References 247 Appendix I 249 Appendix II 259 Appendix III 261 Subject index

Acknowledgments This book is a slightly revised version of my dissertation submitted to the University of Kassel/Germany in June 2015. In one way or another, many people and institutions have contributed to the project and thus helped me arrive at this final point in the writing process. In particular, I am grateful to my supervisor Holden Härtl, who gave me the chance to follow him to Kassel. He both granted me the time and freedom to find a research topic and accompanied me throughout the process. I would like to thank him for his understanding as well as his critical and helpful comments on my work. I also wish to thank the members of my dissertation committee, Andreas Gardt, Lars Heiler, and Claudia Maienborn, for offering their time, expertise, and support. Claudia Maienborn’s review of my dissertation was exceptionally helpful with respect to my work’s strengths as well as flaws, while Andreas Gardt’s assessment opened doors. Furthermore, I am thankful to the editors of Studia Grammatica, Manfred Bierwisch, Hans-Martin Gärtner, and Manfred Krifka, for including this book in the series. Also, at De Gruyter, Daniel Gietz and, in particular, Theresia Piszczan have been instrumental in the revision and publishing process. My dissertation was awarded the Barbara und Alfred Röver-Stiftungspreis für Dissertationen 2016 (‘Dissertation Award of the Barbara and Alfred Röver Foundation’) at the University of Kassel. I wish to thank the foundation board for their kind consideration – the foundation’s support and the awarded prize money are being put to good academic use. All the way through this research project, I was fortunate to receive support from colleagues, students, and friends, who edited texts, discussed my work with me, judged language data, participated in experiments, helped with corpus searches and statistical analyses, or came to my aid in different ways. This holds for many others, not mentioned here by name, but I am particularly indebted to Marco Benincasa, Katja Jäschke, Jan Kotowski, Nils Lehnert, Laura Sievers, and the students at the universities in Göttingen and Kassel who participated in my questionnaire studies. (Needless to say, despite all the help and support I received in writing this book, all remaining mistakes are mine alone.) Moreover, the University of Kassel, especially the FB02, the Institute for English and American Studies, and the doctoral colloquium GeKKo, have all contributed to a stimulating and pleasant work environment. Finally, I am grateful from the bottom of my heart to Sina and my parents, Mirjana and Stephan, without whose patience, support, and love this book and lots of other things would not have been possible.

List of Tables Table 1

Table 2 Table 3 Table 4 Table 5

Table 6 Table 7

Table 8 Table 9 Table 10 Table 11 Table 12 Table 13

Absolute predicative and attributive occurrences and respective ratios of adjectives schön, gelb, müde, and hungrig from a 34 COSMAS IIweb / TAGGED-T search Different proposals for universal AORs with hierarchical clines of 132 property concepts itemized by author(s) Examples from Kemmerer et al.’s (2007) rating study on AORs with 137 concrete notional property classes Corpus Study: Absolute occurrences of output adjective classes 163 depending on the position of the input adjectives Corpus Study: Results of multinomial regression for class membership of the output adjective in dependence of the input adjective’s 165 position Corpus Study: Model fitting information for individual 168 adjectives Corpus Study: Post-hoc results (Tukey HSD) of the ANOVA for the intra-output-category distribution of adjectives depending on 169 adjective weight Questionnaire I: Overall mean scores for the expected answers of 180 the item categories ‘SL’, ‘IL’, and ‘GH’ Questionnaire I: Independent t-tests for subject and item means for 181 the two groups SL and IL Questionnaire I: Post-hoc results (Tukey HSD) of the ANOVA for 182 multiple group (IL, SL, and GH) comparisons Questionnaire II: Overall mean scores for the two critical conditions 222 (SL and IL) and the three filler conditions (FO, FI, and FE) Questionnaire II: Independent t-tests for subject and item means 223 for the two groups SL and IL Questionnaire II: Post-hoc results (Tukey HSD) of the ANOVA for comparisons between critical (IL and SL) and benchmark groups 224 (FO, FI, and FE)

List of Figures Figure 1 Figure 2

Figure 3

Figure 4 Figure 5 Figure 6

Figure 7 Figure 8

Corpus Study: Overall occurrences of output adjective classes given 164 the input adjective as the first or the second adjective Corpus Study: Odds ratios (likelihood) of output adjectives from the different classes to feature as the second of two adjectives in 166 comparison to the reference class TEMP Corpus Study: Measures of morphophonological weight for the respective two adjectives across output classes with the input 169 adjective either as the first or the second adjective Questionnaire I: Overall mean scores: expected answers of critical 181 and benchmark items Questionnaire I: Mean comparisons across the conditions IL and SL 183 for individual critical items Questionnaire I: Means of individual GH-items, class-divided into those including one relational adjective, those including at least one absolute adjective, and those including two relative 183 adjectives Questionnaire II: Overall mean scores of critical and filler 223 (benchmark) items Questionnaire II: Mean comparisons across conditions SL and IL for 225 individual critical items

Abbreviations Adj/A Adv AgrDP AAN-phrase AN-phrase AOR AP App. AUG CN CL CP DeReKo DET DP en. ERP FA fn. FP FocusP IL IP Masc N NN(-compound) NP n.p. PM PP (Red) RC RT Sing SL Spec TP UG VP

adjective adverb agreement determiner phrase adjective-adjective-noun phrase adjective-noun phrase adjective order restriction adjective phrase appendix augmentative common noun classifier complementizer phrase Deutsches Referenzkorpus determiner determiner phrase endnote event-related brain potentials function application footnote functional projection Focus projection individual-level (predicate) inflectional phrase masculine noun noun-noun(-compound) noun phrase no pagination predicate modification prepositional phrase reduced relative clause reading time singular stage-level (predicate) specifier tense phrase universal grammar verb phrase

Introduction This book approaches order restrictions on attributive adjectives (AORs), both from a theoretical point of view as well as on the basis of a corpus study and experimental designs. The research focus will at the same time be broader and narrower than just any kind of AOR – adjectives and modification in general as well as very particular kinds of restrictions argued for in the literature are at the heart of this study. Strictly speaking, typical adjectives are not necessary to form sentences in the same sense verbs and nouns are. Principles of economy, however, dictate that there are not indefinitely many of the latter two classes in a given language for any conceivable concept one wishes to express. Languages vary and, while a Japanese speaker has the two simplex nouns mizu ‘cold water’ and yu ‘hot water’ at his disposal, an English speaker will have to resort to something like the translations in quotation marks to express their equivalents. There simply are “not enough nouns and verbs to express every shade of meaning needed” (Pullum & Huddleston 2002: 526) and more complex nominal concepts are typically enriched by adjectives to add finer nuances or restrict meaning. As illustrated by the underlined part in example (1), many languages do not only modify nouns via a single adjective, but can employ a – possibly very large – number of adjectives to build increasingly complex concepts. (1)

Timmy would like one of these cool black Dutch bikes for his birthday.

At the same time, most English speakers agree that reordering the adjectives in (1) is not easily possible without extraordinary accentuation, or that the strings in (2a/b) at least generate strongly marked structures: (2) a. */?Timmy would like one of these black cool Dutch bikes for his birthday.1 b. *Timmy would like one of these cool Dutch black bikes for his birthday. On the other hand, such constraints on adjective order can often easily be overridden if context and scope relations call for it as shown for the possible discourse continuation of (1) in (3): (3)

No, Timmy said he wanted a blue cool Dutch bike, not a lame black one.

1 Here and throughout the following, asterisks (*) are used to denote ungrammaticality, question marks (?) to denote questionable grammaticality or markedness, and a combination of the two (*/?) markedness tending to ungrammaticality. I will not make use of a symbol-based distinction between grammatical and pragmatic oddness, but state so when appropriate.

2

Introduction

Possibly, putting slight focus stress on blue is necessary here. In any case, however, embedded in some context, the sentence in (3) fares better than its out-ofthe-blue counterpart in (2a). Besides stress, AORs are also known to underlie a complex interplay of further intervening factors such as morphophonological weight, the idiomaticity of certain adjective-noun-combinations, or the ubiquity of polysemy within the class of adjectives. In particular, the first two of these are often regarded as ‘soft factors’ in grammatical description. Thus, the most basic question approached in this book concerns the status of AORs within a grammatical system and in how far we can abstract away from intervening factors. For example, the most common way of accommodating such restrictions is to draw on the different property concepts encoded by adjectives. The apparently only possible serialization for the three adjectives in (1) then boils down to the assumption that (language-specifically or universally) a ‘natural order’ of EVALUATION preceding COLOR preceding ORIGIN exists. A hierarchy of this kind is illustrated in (4), taken from Payne & Huddleston (2002: 453) for prenominally modifying adjectives in English: (4) EVALUATIVE > GENERAL PROPERTY > AGE > COLOR > PROVENANCE > MANUFACTURE

>

TYPE

While Payne & Huddleston understand this vague hierarchy as a ‘labile ordering constraint’, attempts have been made to incorporate similar hierarchies syntactically as hard and fast rules, and thus declare them core grammatical phenomena. In particular, cartographic approaches to the mapping of syntax and semantics postulate syntactic primacy and directly anchor property concepts in functional projections (FPs) dedicated to the respective concrete notional classes – with the sequence of these FPs argued to reflect general principles of universal grammar (UG) (cf. e.g. Cinque 1994; 2010; Ramaglia 2011; Scott 2002). The diametrically opposed perspective, in contrast, tends to acknowledge that hierarchies – of sorts – exist as psychological or psycholinguistic phenomena, yet deny them grammatical status. The quote by Bouchard is telling in this respect: »Though the classification of properties may interact with language, it is not part of grammar, it does not fall under the object of study of linguistic theory.« (Bouchard 2002: 121)

A middle ground between the two assumptions, one of rigid orders of concrete property concepts encoded by quality adjectives and the outright rejection thereof, is to be found in attempts at splitting the adjective class along basic grammatical criteria. Thus, for example, Svenonius (2008) and Truswell (2009) claim the divide between intersective and subsective modifiers to crucially inform

Introduction

3

AORs, with notional property classes regarded an epiphenomenon and empirically undergenerating as predictors for adjective order. Following from these essentially incompatible treatments of AORs, as core syntactic phenomena, outside the realm of linguistics proper, or possibly somewhere in between, the overarching research problem addressed in this study is formulated in (A): (A) Is the empirical motivation for treating AORs as directly written into syntactic structures well-founded? Are there possibly constraints that can be captured as grammatical phenomena, while others elude such an approach? The study at hand approaches this research question from a theoretical perspective by sketching basic ideas of syntactic (mainly generative/cartographic) theory as well as empirically by data evaluation and reviewing a variety of psycho-/neurolinguistic studies. A necessary foundation for addressing (A) is the classification not only of adjectives as such but also of more general modification patterns found in language. To this end, the first chapter will be devoted to a general review of prominent approaches to adjective typologies from a diverse range of perspectives. The correspondence between these typologies and the research problem is at the heart of the third chapter, which argues against both too fine-grained order restrictions in general and, more importantly, their concrete specification as syntactic reflexes in particular. Zooming in, a more concrete research question motivating this work concerns AORs and their possible sensitivity to a distinction between, on the one hand, temporary and/or accidental properties, and, on the other, permanent and/or inherent properties ascribed to individuals. Many contributions to the field make mention of a broader serialization pattern to be read off from clines of property concepts. Thus, a hierarchy such as (4) is taken to more generally reflect the relation between property concepts and modified nouns in that decreasing distance to the noun is understood as tantamount to increasing inherence of a property to the nominal referent. Among other notions, such as relative as opposed to absolute or subjective as opposed to objective properties, this broader perspective is also claimed to show up in the opposition of temporary and permanent attributes and their relative distance to the noun. Temporariness and permanence will be approached from two perspectives in this regard, i) as intuitive notions and ii) as a presumably basic distinction manifested in language that cuts through word and predicate classes. From a formal semantic viewpoint, this latter perspective is often captured as a dichotomy of stage-level- (SL) and individual-level-predicates (IL) (see Carlson 1980; Kratzer 1995). Embedded in the larger context of the nature of AORs, however, connec-

4

Introduction

tions to the temporariness-permanence-opposition are to be found in the formal as well as non-formal literature at various places. For example, drawing on data from German such as the ones in (5), Eichinger (1992: 321–322) and Eroms (2000: 270–271) attest ‘labile ordering constraints’ in form of a preferred serialization pattern of temporary (~accidental) properties preceding permanent (~inherent) ones. The notion of ‘preference’ in these approaches is central, given that judgements with respect to the actual markedness of the respective ‘-examples diverge: (5)

a.

bei geöffneten umrankten Fenstern

a.’

?bei

b.

einen betrunkenen jungen Mann

b.’

?einen

c.

auf einem leeren weiten Platz

c.’

?auf

‘with open entwined windows’

umrankten geöffneten Fenstern2 ‘a drunk young man’

jungen betrunkenen Mann ‘on an empty wide square’

einem weiten leeren Platz

In turn, rigid order constraints in the form of SL-modifiers preceding IL-modifiers3 in attributive structures are claimed for more particular constructions by, for example, Cinque (2010) and Larson (1998; 1999). Here, the syntax-semantics interface is not modeled along the lines of ‘preferences’ as the basis of possible interpretations or markedness, but draws on ideas of an asymmetrically partitioned DP, i.e. a concrete structural configuration responsible for the distribution of certain modifiers. Partitioning, in this sense, entails a layer at which only permanent or generic modification takes place, structurally located in closer proximity to the head noun than a layer at which, although not exclusively, temporary modification is located. Going back to Bolinger (1967) and Vendler (1968), the primary data source for this observation are adjectives that presumably allow for both an IL- as well as a SL-reading. Doubled prenominally, as in the English examples in (6), the order is rigid and allows for disambiguation:

2 As remarked by one reviewer, (5a’) is not necessarily odd because of some kind of AOR, but due to the a priori incompatibility of the preposition bei and umrankt. While I agree in general, the example is a) Eroms’s (2000: 271) and b) using the definite article does not seem to improve (5a’) substantially; see ?die umrankten geöffneten Fenster. 3 Chapter 2 will be fairly critical of the alleged force of the IL-SL-divide. Nonetheless, for reasons of brevity and terminological uniformity, yet without theoretical commitment, the expressions ‘IL’ and ‘SL’ will be used for means of classification throughout this study.

Introduction

(6)

a.

the visiblei visibleii stars

b.

the navigablei navigableii rivers

5

The only possible interpretations for these examples, so the claim goes, is one in which the respective first of the two adjectives (visiblei and navigablei) has the temporary reading, i.e., for example, visibility of some concrete stars at some concrete point in time. The respective second adjectives in (6a/b), in turn, can only receive generic interpretations, i.e. making reference to the class membership or a general characteristic of the modified element. Two further research questions address this conflation of temporariness and AORs. First, (B) concerns the location of ‘typical’ SL-adjectives such as naked, tired, or drunk. All of these are characteristically quality adjectives and thus from the group of expressions often claimed to be subject to ordering principles such as the one illustrated in (4): (B) Within the class of quality adjectives, how well-founded are claims that locate temporary property concepts in positions farther away from the head noun than permanent ones? If ordering is not a rigid matter in this respect, is there a preferred location and may we derive it from more general perspectives on AORs? Besides theoretical considerations, this book’s contribution to answering (B) is a more direct one than for (A) above, as chapter 3 reports on two studies. First, a corpus study – searching for ten German SL-adjectives as one of two attributive modifiers in complex DPs – establishes to which extent a peculiar structural location can be motivated on empirical / distributional grounds. Second, a rating study makes use of adjectives argued to display polysemy / ambiguity directly related to IL and SL – such as sick ‘1.~ill; 2.~crazy’ – and tests ordering preferences in contexts designed to disambiguate the expressions. As with (A) above, however, approaching these questions is in need of substantiating and, here, the notion of ‘temporariness’ is mainly concerned. To this end, chapter 2 addresses temporariness, albeit essentially through the back-door by overviewing some of the fundamental ideas the opposition of IL and SL is based on. The third research question aims at the more particular claims of a partitioned DP and does not apply to the class of quality adjectives alone. As has become clear from the paragraphs enclosing examples (6a/b) above, the line of demarcation between referring to classes of objects and individual objects themselves appears blurred. Thus, being a member of a possible class of visible stars is potentially different in the kind of permanence encoded by the modifying

6

Introduction

element than the, arguably, permanent properties contributed by young and wide in young man and wide square in the translations to (5b/c). Concretely retracing the Cinquean and Larsonian frameworks, (C) concerns questions of kind-reference as well as genericity in general as opposed to object-reference and is largely addressed in chapter 4. (C) In which way do theories incorporating an asymmetric partitioning of DP inform apparent AORs with respect to the SL-IL-distinction? What is meant by stage- and individual-level in the approaches and in how far are the data they are based on valid or generalizable? Besides concretely evaluating the two approaches, a second rating study tries to test some of the predictions that derive from the concrete frameworks of Cinque and Larson. Exploiting certain characteristics of German –bar-adjectives (roughly, the equivalents to English –ible/–able) as parts of complex DPs in introductory assertions, follow-up sentences create contexts that essentially deny the property expressed by the –bar-adjectives to hold at the time of utterance and, hence, arguably exclude the SL-reading by enforcing generic readings.

General remarks, methodology and what this book is (not) This study draws on a variety of different sources and methods. It is neither primarily a study in formal semantics nor in formal syntax, in that it does not offer any novel proposals on how to represent data structurally or account for meaning compositionally. Rather, it has a strong empirical core in a corpus and two questionnaire studies that put theory to the test. It does, however, substantially retrace a variety of formal approaches and, by doing so, the better parts of chapters 1 and 2 as well as the introductory sections of chapters 3 and 4 are setting the stage. Moreover, with word order being the quintessential domain of syntax and adjective order no exception, chapters 3 and, to a lesser degree, 4 use a generative framework largely based on Sternefeld (2008) to represent syntactic structures. The respective scopes of investigation will be set from chapter to chapter, but two general restrictions apply, one in the realm of nouns, the other in the realm of adjectives. First, the discussion will focus on object nouns and I will largely neglect deverbal/eventive nouns. Second, I will in fact also neglect a whole set of expressions that, depending on the classification,

Introduction

7

can be regarded as adjectives – among them numerals, quantifiers, referential adjectives, and discourse-anaphoric / -cataphoric expressions. In general, this study draws on various works and thoughts from non-formal research traditions. In this respect, functionalist perspectives on word classes (in particular with respect to temporariness) as well as notionally based approaches from the rather descriptively oriented tradition of German philology (with respect to adjectives and their order) are addressed. Moreover, psycho- as well as neurolinguistic studies are consulted. Hopefully avoiding excessive eclecticism, the rationale for this practice is manifold: First, several of the apparent restrictions discussed in this study are elusive to formal approaches and are shown to, at least partially, lie outside of grammatical theory in the narrow sense. Second, related two first, cartographic approaches do avail themselves of notional adjective classes and implement them in their syntactic configurations. Third, besides the insights gained into the cognitive basis of AORs, the empirical perspectives drawn from experimental studies are a useful source for motivating questionnaire designs and avoiding pitfalls. The corpus study reported on in chapter 3 is corpus-based, not corpus-driven (cf. Biber 2010), in that it utilizes a clearly pre-defined set of categories as input for the search syntax as well as a clearly pre-defined set of classes the output adjectives are distributed to. Both experimental designs in chapters 3 and 4 are offline rating studies and the reasons for choosing offline studies primarily derive from the nature of AORs argued for in chapter 3 and some of the shortcomings of online studies investigating into them. All three studies avail themselves of German data.4 In turn, the general discussion also draws extensively on English examples used in the literature (and sometimes on examples from other languages). Yet, AORs are in many respects taken to be universal – theory-dependent either in terms of preferences or as a product of UG. If not indicated otherwise, the structures are taken to be transferable to German constructions not always listed. Moreover, adjectives are a word class exhibiting a high degree of polysemy – while at various places different readings with possibly different grammatical properties are indicated and/or excluded, this procedure could not be upheld consistently throughout the text. I hope to be sufficiently clear which readings are intended in the respective passages.

4 Not that it needed justification, but there are in particular pragmatic reasons such as the recruitment of participants. Also, adjective order often is a subtle phenomenon and, in particular, designing questionnaires is a realm in which native speaker competence has invaluable advantages.

8

Introduction

Chapter outline Chapter 1 provides a vantage point for the chapters to follow by introducing adjectives as a word class, both from a general perspective as well as with particular regard to temporariness. I review a substantial body of literature, including cross-linguistic perspectives and the language-specific situation for German, the distinctiveness (and commonalities) of predicative and attributive uses, and patterns of modification. Classification systems from descriptively and notionally oriented perspectives are included, not the least because many approaches to AORs make concrete use of notional classes. Moreover, I introduce set-theoretic as well as degree-based adjective typologies, illustrating two diverging perspectives: i) general attempts to unify their respective semantic contributions by treating as many different adjective classes as possible in intersective fashion and ii) calling into question this possibility for even presumably clearcut cases of intersective adjectives. More concretely addressing temporariness, chapter 2 reviews the debate on stage-level and individual-level predicates with a particular focus on adjectives. First, the pertinent diagnostics are introduced, acknowledging an unhealthy dose of inconsistencies and counter-examples for a distinction regarded as fundamental by many. Briefly touching upon major theoretical approaches, event semantics, and the lexical aspect of adjectives, a tentative mapping of presumably SL-adjectives to temporariness is undertaken and argued to be problematic. Finally, the chapter establishes a link between some of the considerations from chapters 1 and 2 by transferring more general classification systems to the case of SL-adjectives. In particular, their typical status as absolute gradable quality adjectives is striking as well as instructive with regard to their behavior in sequences of multiple adjectives. Chapter 3 deals with AORs in the realm of quality adjectives directly. It starts out with a discussion of some syntactic assumptions and structurally locates quality adjectives, or rather adjective phrases, in the specifiers of functional projections in between D and NP. Pace the cartographic view, however, the ensuing discussion shows this configuration to not offer concrete advantages with respect to AORs over adjunction-based approaches. Adjective order is by far more flexible than often assumed and writing notional property concepts directly into the syntax is shown to undergenerate. Also, the psycho- and neurolinguistics studies reviewed do not offer an unequivocal picture speaking in favor of notional hierarchies, either. While the findings of the corpus study reflect these considerations, several previous observations are equally represented in the data yield: for example, relative adjectives precede absolute ones

Introduction

9

with statistical normality and ‘weaker’ factors such as iconic principles and frequency appear to drive AORs to a substantial degree. Importantly, neither the findings from the corpus nor from the questionnaire study corroborate the hypothesis that temporary/SL-adjectives precede permanent or inherent ones in a regular way. In chapter 4, following a brief introduction to genericity and kind-reference, the position of relational adjectives and modifiers of lexicalized/idiomatic ANphrases is located in NP. In Cinque and Larson, two general approaches to a more articulated partitioning of DP are reviewed. While several problems arise from their assumptions, they provide the basis for the second questionnaire study. Again, no indication for a constraint of the kind SL > IL can be deduced from the results, yet, more general constraints discussed in the preceding chapters come into play. The conclusion recapitulates the study’s major results by addressing the research questions formulated in this introduction.

Chapter 1

The word class ‘adjective’ The word as a central layer in the build-up of grammatical systems has proven indispensable for linguistic description, irrespective of theoretical frameworks and despite the notorious difficulty of actually deciding – cross-linguistically as well as language-specifically – which structures should be regarded as words (cf. among many others Haspelmath 2011; Jacobsen 2011). The plethora of words in any given language, in turn, makes the distinction of classes among them equally indispensable – “word classes, it is agreed, do [. . .] simplify our description of the structure of the language [. . .] and are an essential stage in the construction of an adequate grammar of a language” (Crystal 1967: 26–27). Thus, it is small wonder that ancient grammarians (e.g. Pāṇini, Aristotle, or Dionysius Thrax) already engaged in lexical classification (cf. Baker 2003; Robins 1990). For example, Dionysius in the 2nd century BC defines the word (léxis) in his Téchnē grammatiké as “the minimal unit of grammatical description” (Robins 1990: 38)1 and provides refinements of older lexical classifications (in particular of the Stoics) along the lines of inflectional properties.2 Crucially, however, ancient grammars tend to provide semantic content allegedly encoded by items of the morphosyntactically identified classes: in the Téchnē, nouns signify “a concrete or abstract entity” and verbs “an activity or process performed or undergone” (ibid.: 39). This twofold perspective on parts of speech, i.e. morphosyntactic behavior and accompanying semantic contribution, informs the discussion among word class researchers up to this day. As it is easy to find very many counterexamples for most languages (see brackets in (7)), the traditional notional definitions in (7) of the three major word classes noun, verb, and adjective are nowadays virtually unanimously dismissed as overly simplistic (cf. e.g. Croft 2000; Crystal 1967; Haspelmath 2001): 1 The upper bound being the sentence (lógos); cf. ibid.: 38. 2 The largest of the eight classes distinguished by Dionysus are verbs (rhēma) and nouns (ónoma), inflecting for tense, number, person, yet not for case, and for case, yet not for the other three categories, respectively (cf. ibid.: 39). It is worth noting for the purposes of this study that adjectives are not described as a distinct class by the time – given that case inflection is considered the fundamentum divisionis and that Ancient Greek adjectives, like nouns, inflect for case, “Greek (and Latin) adjectives were treated as a subclass of nouns” (ibid.: 33). The subsumption of adjectives continues in Ancient Rome, e.g. in Priscian’s Latin grammar (6th cent. AD) (cf. ibid.: 65–67), and the two categories are not dispersed until the Middle Ages, e.g. by Peter Helias (12th century) and Thomas of Erfurt (13th–14th centuries) with the distinction between nomen substantivum and nomen adiectivum (cf. ibid.: 95).

Cross-linguistic and language-specific

(7) nouns: verbs:

denote things, persons, places

11

(but: peace, eruption etc.)

denote actions, processes, events (but: know, exist etc.)

adjectives: denote qualities, properties

(but: electrical, broken etc.)

As Haspelmath (2001) notes, however, the predictive power of notional definitions increases significantly if applied cross-linguistically, as opposed to languagespecifically, so that “if the goal is to define nouns, verbs, and adjectives in general terms that are not restricted to a particular language, these simplistic notional definitions do not fare so badly” (ibid.: 16540; see Schachter & Shopen 2007: 2 for a similar argument). The circularity of the claim aside (it is far from clear how to judge the quality of a certain type of definition without prior knowledge of what it is that we seek to define), the morpho-syntax vs semantics divide for word class discrimination goes hand in hand with the language-specific vs cross-linguistic divide. Albeit perpetually keeping in mind questions of temporariness, this chapter deals with adjectives in a very general sense and is primarily meant to serve as a stage-setter for the chapters to follow. Its structure is as follows: 1.1.1. and 1.1.2. discuss adjectives from cross-linguistic as well as language-specific perspectives, respectively, and embed them in the larger context of word classes. In 1.2.1., the relationship between predicative and attributive use of adjectives is touched upon, while 1.2.2., which may be regarded as the chapter’s core part, introduces and critically discusses modification patterns as well as several adjective typologies proposed in the literature.

1.1 Cross-linguistic and language-specific 1.1.1 Cross-linguistic perspectives Limiting the brief discussion3 to adjectives and their relation to the other major lexical word classes in (7),4 a mere glimpse at the pertinent typological literature 3 Neither typology nor word class discrimination are of primary concern here: The discussion is selective and will remain noncommittal as regards theory. However, several general typological claims are insightful for the later discussion of German (and English) adjectives and I will focus on these. 4 The term word class is generally applied to the ten (or eleven) categories noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronoun, adposition, numeral, conjunction, article, interjection (and particles). These are conventionally grouped into content and function words, a classification based on concreteness and specificity of meaning, class size and openness, and text frequency (cf. Haspelmath 2001: 16538–16540; Rijkhoff 2007: 709–711).

12

The word class ‘adjective’

reveals that nouns, verbs, and adjectives are not assigned equal status for grammatical systems. In one way or another, most analyses agree that adjectives “alter, clarify, or adjust the meaning contributions of nouns [. . .and] may be defined as a syntactically distinct class of words whose most characteristic function is to modify nouns. They typically denote properties – most centrally in the domains of size, shape, colour, worth, and age” (Pullum & Huddleston 2002: 526–527).5 A connatural approximation is found in accounts of adjectives as ‘non-autonomous’ words that, while allowing for naming (abstract) properties in many cases, as e.g. in beautiful, nice, or quick, always require an external base via or for which said properties are concretized6 (cf. e.g. Eroms 2000: 29–39). A variety of languages are claimed to only have a small and closed or no distinct adjective class at all7 (cf. e.g. Dixon 1982; Hamann 1991, Rijkhoff 2000; 2002; Schachter & Shopen 2007; Stassen 1997; but see Baker 2003; Dixon 2004 for the claim that every language has adjectives), while the non-existence of verbs or nouns is largely disputed, i.e. the two are oftentimes regarded as absolute universals8 (cf. e.g. Schachter & Shopen 2007; Wetzer 1996; but see Croft 2000 for possible counter-examples). Empirically, in languages that allegedly lack adjectives, either nouns, verbs, or a combination of the two compensate for this ‘deficiency’ by taking over (e.g. through stative verbs in relative clauses or adnominal NPs; for overviews of ancillary strategies see Rijkhoff 2000: 217–218; Rijkhoff 2002: 129–141; Schachter & Shopen 2007: 13–19). Moreover, in some languages adjectives only feature attributively but not predicatively (cf. e.g. Kennedy 2012; Rijkhoff 2002), while in others adjectives as attributive modifiers are obligatorily combined with a predicative marker (e.g. a copula; see Baker 2003; Cinque 2010). Possible explanations for such unequal distributions tend to draw primarily on semantic-pragmatic functions of word classes, the semantic foundations upon which conceptual categories are encoded linguistically, and

5 This is a very general definition that arguably holds true cross-linguistically, although Pullum & Huddleston’s (2002) chapter principally deals with English adjectives and adverbs. 6 Whether the concept of autonomy is helpful as a fundamentum divisionis among the lexical categories is doubtful, however. It seems, for example, equally elusive to pin down the meanings of the majority of verbs without recourse to an AGENT, EXPERIENCER , STIMULUS etc. 7 Out of his sample of 52 languages, Rijkhoff (2002: 133) claims that at least the following lack a distinct adjective class: Burmese, Galela, Hixkaryana, Koasati, Korean, Krongo, Lango, Mandarin, Nivkh, Nung, Nunggubuyu, Vietnamese, Tsou, and West Greenlandic. Furthermore, Rijkhoff attests a small and closed class only (he arbitrarily chooses languages with up to twelve adjectives) for: Babungo, Bambara, Chuckchi, Gude, Kisi, Oromo, Pipil, Sarcee, and Tamil (ibid.: 129). 8 To this effect, Schachter & Shopen (2007) state that “while languages may differ considerably in the extent to which they make a grammatical distinction between nouns and verbs, it seems correct to say that all languages do in fact make some distinction between them” (ibid.: 13).

Cross-linguistic and language-specific

13

heterogeneous claims on adjectives as sort of a transition class in between nouns and verbs.9 The remainder of this subsection introduces one particular criterion which has been hypothesized to cross-linguistically drive the existence of a separate word-class ‘adjective’, the time-stability of adjectival concepts, as well as a brief overview of some more general approaches.

Time-stability and word classes From a functionalist perspective, Givón (1979; 2001), Stassen (1997), Wetzer (1996), and Wierzbicka (1988) all argue for temporality as a decisive factor in how languages subdivide their prototypical vocabulary. On this view, two to five classes cluster along a lexical continuum (8a), whose basis is claimed to be languageindependent and directly mappable onto a conceptual space of time-stability (8b) (illustrations adapted from Wetzer 1996: 52): (8)

Besides the one-to-one mapping between conceptual duration and the respective word-class the concepts in question are typically encoded as, this reasoning is informed by cross-linguistic observations of the grammatical behavior of adjectives. While they tend to show properties shared by neither nouns nor verbs in a respective language, they at the same time display greater grammatical similarities with said categories than verbs with nouns (Wetzer 1996; Wierzbicka 1988; see also Lakoff 1966). For example, one of the fundamental tendencies across languages is that, unlike verbs, adjectives and nouns “are not morphologically marked for tense, aspect or mood” (Hamann 1991: 658). Furthermore, Wetzer (1996) argues that adjectives can cross-linguistically be subdivided into ‘noun-like’, central, and ‘verb-like’ adjectives on grammatical grounds, e.g. in Japanese, for which the author assumes two such classes (namely central and nouny adjectives; cf. ibid.: 46–47; see also Baker’s 2003: 240–245 argument for a single adjective class in Japanese). Boundaries of the two to three adjectival

9 See e.g. Ballmer & Brennenstuhl (1982), who understand adjectives (and adverbs) as a connecter class between verbs and nouns and claim systematization of this class to be possible only with recourse to dimensions provided by verbs and nouns.

14

The word class ‘adjective’

subclasses (verby, nouny, and central adjectives), however, are considered fuzzy and oftentimes difficult to pin down (cf. Wetzer: ch.2). At the same time, the temporariness criterion explicitly conflates the cross-linguistic lexical continuum with time-stability, as can be read off from the following quotations: »The prototype of the class noun occupies the most time-stable end of the scale. That is, the properties of prototypical nouns change only little over repeated perceptual scans. [. . .] Prototype verbs occupy the other end of the time-stability scale. They are coherent bundles of experience of relatively short duration. [. . . Prototype] adjectives occupy the same extreme time-stable end of our temporal stability scale as prototype nouns.10 Still, the fact that adjectives code only single features of experienced nouns also makes them, at least potentially, less time-stable: A change in this feature changes the whole nature of this adjective.« (Givón 2001: 51–53) »The Time Stability Principle The less time stable an intransitive predicate is, the greater its chances are of being encoded by the verbal strategy.« (Stassen 1997: 127) »Prototypische Adjektive stehen in der Mitte zwischen den zur Referenz genutzten Substantiven und den der Prädikation dienenden Verben [und] repräsentieren Begriffe mittlerer Zeitstabilität, also Eigenschaftsbegriffe.«11 (Eichinger 2007: 163)

Wierzbicka (1988) essentially takes the same line as regards time-stability, at least as one of the decisive factors at play in the selection process of which semantic concepts tend to be encoded as adjectives or nouns within languages. Accordingly, nouns are prototypically used for categorization, while adjectives prototypically denote descriptions. She argues that, besides permanence, it is importance within a given culture or speech community as well as general conspicuousness of a concept / property that contribute to the mapping of semantic concept to part-of-speech – the higher the value of these three factors, the more likely nominal encoding was:

10 In an earlier publication, Givón explicitly locates the property concepts denoted by prototypical adjectives in a central position on the time-stability scale (cf. Givón 1979: 321–322). 11 ‘Prototypical adjectives are located in the center in between nouns, used for reference, and verbs, used for predication. They represent concepts of medium time stability, i.e. property concepts.’ [my translation]. Note that Eichinger does not make any cross-linguistic claims but primarily refers to German adjectives.

Cross-linguistic and language-specific

15

»[. . .] human characteristics tend to be designated by nouns rather than adjectives if they are seen as permanent and/or conspicuous and/or important. The common denominator is, I think, this: a noun indicates categorization; an adjective, on the other hand, indicates a mere description.« (Wierzbicka 1988: 468)

In their essential function as categorizers, nouns identify “certain positive, imaginable kinds” (ibid.: 471) from larger sets, e.g. kinds of persons, things, animals, etc.12 Crucially, Wierzbicka argues that nominally designated kinds are typically endowed with a fairly large number of properties, while adjectives encode single properties only. Here, we also find the connection to Givón’s (2001) argument above: a change in the feature – i.e. property – encoded in the adjective, usually makes void the adjective’s entire contribution. The kind designated by the noun, in turn, is not cancelled as readily by a change of a single feature, as it represents a complex, multifaceted feature bundle (for formal approaches to the multiplicity of features of nouns see also e.g. Hamann 1991; Pustojevsky 1995). In other words, an adjectivally designated feature can be present and/or be part of the expected (typical) features that make up the bundle of a KIND, yet its absence does not necessarily alter said KIND. Wierzbicka (1988) uses the word lemon as an example: while “roundish, yellow, sour, comes from a tree, and so on” (ibid.: 471) may well be expected features and thus used to characterize the kind LEMON , the reverse reasoning is invalid. A mere enumeration of these features will not unequivocally establish the kind LEMON , as some other item may well meet all the above criteria without being categorizable as belonging to said kind – to be a lemon, “a thing must come from a lemon tree” (ibid.). As long as this latter condition is met, lemons may well be not roundish, sour etc. – these features, which each represent a single property and are typically realized linguistically as adjectives, are cancellable, the condition is not.13 Obviously, the temporariness approach merely begs the question and the emphasis on prototypical word class members as well as the typological perspective is critical here. After all, the conflations of nouns with temporal stability and verbs with volatileness do not fare much better – language-specifically – than the dismissed notional definitions above. Thus, it is equally easy to come up with counter-examples of simplex, i.e. non-derived, verbs, adjectives, and nouns that do not fit the time-stability continuum in (8); stative verbs such as 12 Here, Wierzbicka (1988) is only referring to prototypical concrete nouns designating discrete entities and not, e.g. event nouns or proper names (cf. ibid.: 496, en.2). 13 Thus, Wierzbicka (1988: 471) illustrates that it is “conceivable that somebody will grow sweet ‘lemons’, or orange ‘lemons’, and that these ‘lemons’ will be called, if not lemons, then at least sweet lemons or orange lemons”.

16

The word class ‘adjective’

know, own, like etc. usually represent states of higher durability than the adjectives ill, sick, or silent. Also, adjectives such as large, round, or blind are typically of higher durability than simplex nouns like war, love, or wave. These examples could well be ascribed exceptional character on a grander scale (as minorities among the non-derived members of a part-of-speech within one language and as cross-linguistic exceptions in languages with large, open adjective classes). Along the lines of a Dixonian (1982) typology, however, the typical adjectival concepts found in languages with small closed adjective classes cast further doubt on the suitability of temporariness as a rough line of demarcation between the major lexical classes. In Dixon’s (1982; 2004) semantic type system of linguistic universals,14 each lexical item belongs to just one type, while “the morphological/syntactic properties associated with particular types will vary from language to language” (Dixon 1982: 9). Cross-linguistically, however, certain types and certain parts-of-speech tend to coincide fairly robustly. For example, if on morphosyntactic grounds a class usually called ‘verb’ can be segregated, the semantic types GIVING , AFFECT, and MOTION , among others, tend to almost always be part of this class. Similarly, OBJECT and KIN are among the types that tend to cluster in a class usually called ‘noun’ across languages. As regards adjectives, Dixon carves out seven types on the basis of monomorphemic English adjectives, a language with a large and open adjectival class: DIMENSION , PHYSICAL PROPERTY, COLOR , HUMAN PROPENSITY, AGE , VALUE , and SPEED (cf. ibid.: 16). In contrast, in his survey of seventeen languages with small, closed adjective classes, he observes that membership in the class is typical for the following four types: DIMENSION , AGE , VALUE , and COLOR (cf. ibid.: 55).15 At least for DIMENSION and COLOR it would be far-fetched to argue that their members denote temporally instable concepts – being, for example, long or deep, brown or red are commonly inherent properties of the entities described as such. The time-stability criterion and its relation to lexical parts-of-speech thus seem problematic, at least if accepted at face value. Whatever the approach’s merits, though, it shows that a whole line of functionalist research utilizes temporariness and permanence as tools for word 14 Semantic types in Dixon’s (1982) sense are conceptual primitives or prototypical semantic realms. Such types are, for example, LIKING or SAYING and their members in English are like, love, hate, loath, dislike etc. and say, state, answer, assure, hint etc., respectively. Languagespecifically, individual types will not only determine word class membership but also morphosyntactic properties and selectional restrictions (cf. ibid.: 9–10). 15 It is at least disputed whether these are actually universal semantic categories – see, for example, Everett’s (2005) claim that Pirahã, an indigenous language spoken by a people of the same name in the Amazon region of Brazil, lacks – among other features often taken to be universal – color terms and numerals.

Cross-linguistic and language-specific

17

classification and it provides a first indication that word classes in general, and possibly adjectives in particular, are heterogeneous with regard to how time-stable the concepts denoted by their members are.

FURTHER APPROACHES A variety of other theories have been developed to tackle the notion part-ofspeech from a cross-linguistic perspective. Due to their lesser relevance to this study in comparison to the approaches presented above, however, I will only touch upon two of them briefly here (for an overview of several modern theories see Rijkhoff 2007). In his universal-typological theory, Croft (2000) argues for three universal pragmatic functions in language and claims that each of them has a prototype realization through an unmarked lexical semantic class as illustrated in (9) (adopted from ibid.: 88): (9)

lexical semantic class noun adjective verb

pragmatic function → → →

reference to an object modification by a property predication of an action

Cross-combinations within this schema are marked in the sense of an implicational universal stating that “the marked member is encoded by at least as many morphemes as the unmarked member” (ibid.: 89; italics in the original). Thus, for example, English cruel is an adjective because it functions as a modifier in its unmarked form (the cruel man), but is marked with a derivational suffix when used for reference (cruelty) or with the copula in predicative use ( John is cruel). Croft’s theory is of interest for an analysis of adjectival behavior insofar for the study hand, as it explicitly claims functional primacy of attribution over predication (see 1.2.1.1. below; for a related framework see Hengeveld 1992 and Rijkhoff 2002). As mentioned above, semantic and pragmatic approaches to cross-linguistic word-class determination are opposed to primarily syntactic ones, which believe morphosyntax and in particular the distribution of lexical items to be at the heart of the task at hand (for syntactocentric perspectives in general see, among many others, Adger 2003; Radford 2004; Sternefeld 2008). To this effect, Schachter & Shopen (2007) understand “grammatical properties of a word [. . .] to be relevant to its parts-of-speech classification [which] include the word’s distribution, its range of syntactic function, and the morphological or syntactic

18

The word class ‘adjective’

categories for which it is specifiable” (ibid.: 1–2),16 while semantics is considered a mere epiphenomenon in this procedure. In this vein, the traditional names given to the lexical classes reflect universal semantic considerations insofar as the preponderance of words classified morphosyntactically indeed happen to be applicable to the notional definitions in (7) above (cf. ibid.: 2–3). According to Baker (2003), nouns, verbs, and adjectives are universal lexical classes that can be carved out on syntactic grounds within a generative framework. Verbs can be distinguished as they are “inherently unsaturated expressions that hold of something else” (ibid.: 23) and syntactically always have a specifier. Nouns, in contrast, are the only items that bear a referential index, which makes them uniquely suited for comparison. For Baker, only “common nouns have a component of meaning that makes it legitimate to ask whether some X is the same (whatever) as Y” (ibid.: 95–96), which makes them suitable for anaphoric reference. Finally, adjectives – as the third universal class – are set apart by means of negative evidence, as they neither have a specifier nor bear a referential index. The reasoning in this respect is that the syntactic environments adjectives, but not verbs or nouns, appear in are suited for the former due to their unmarkedness;17 the latter two classes are excluded due to their inherent characteristics outlined above. This section has provided a sketch of a variety of heterogeneous approaches to adjectives with respect to cross-linguistic word-classification. While the status of adjectives as a universal class is by itself contested, it is also difficult to extract a distillate of what a primary language-universal function and/or behavior of adjectives could be. Approaches range from negative evidence in that adjectives, unlike verbs and nouns, lack inherent characteristics (Baker 2003) to having a universal pragmatic function as modifiers (Croft 2000) or prototypically occupying certain universal semantic types (Dixon 1982; 2004). Moreover, timestability has been introduced as a criterion perennially drawn upon in the functionalist literature (Givón 1979; 2001; Stassen 1997; Wetzer 1996; Wierzbicka 1988). The fruitfulness of this latter factor, however, is questionable, given the abundance of counter-examples in individual languages as well as the status of those semantic types, in Dixon’s (1982) terminology, that are typically realized by means of adjectives.

16 For a comparable approach that additionally includes phonological features see Anward et al. (1997). 17 As such environments, Baker (2003: 191) lists use as direct attributive modifiers of nouns, as complements of degree heads, and in resultative secondary predication.

Cross-linguistic and language-specific

19

1.1.2 Language-specific perspectives While no consensus can be attested for dealing with word classes cross-linguistically, in particular as regards the primacy of semantic, pragmatic, or morphosyntactic criteria, most modern approaches to language-specific word classes use syntactic criteria as their point of departure (cf. e.g. Engel 1991: 17–19; see Radford 2004: ch.2 for a textbook example of morphosyntactically deriving lexical word classes). This is not to say that the task is in any way a more trivial one. The general challenge – one that goes well beyond this book’s scope – lies in the descriptive desideratum of assigning “all words of a language to a very few classes by applying a very few general criteria” (Crystal 1967: 29). Yet, descriptive adequacy is at least equally important, and lumping together words on the basis of overly superficial characteristics runs the risk of under-classification, i.e. setting up “major classes [. . .] with a very uncertain and miscellaneous constitution, lacking any readily perceivable homogeneity” (ibid.: 30; see also Croft 2000: 72–76). The ratio between criteria and classes is fairly straightforward: the more criteria are introduced, the more classes one will have to establish and the fewer members each class will have. The smaller and more general the battery of criteria is, in turn, the fewer and larger the classes will be. Balancing the two arguments – manageability of the word class system vs adequate homogeneity within classes – necessarily leads to more general superclasses with more or less central and prototypical membership on the one hand, and subclasses that capture less central members with a greater degree of descriptive adequacy on the other (cf. e.g. Anward et al. 1997; Crystal 1967). The remainder of this section illustrates the fairly uncontroversial intersection of analyses and prototypical members of the class adjective in German. Several subclasses deviating from the typical behavior and exceptions relevant to our means are discussed in 1.2. Traditionally, German adjectives are subclassified as one of the inflecting classes: not inflecting for tense (conjugation) but for case (declension) sets them apart from verbs, variable as opposed to fixed gender from nouns (cf. e.g. Duden 2005: 132–135; Engel 1991: 17–19). They constitute an open and substantial lexical class, making up approximately one sixth of the German vocabulary (cf. Weinrich et al. 2005: 477).18 Despite disagreement on the basic morphosyntactic requirements of adjectivehood, their base positions and, to a lesser 18 In Hundsnurscher & Splett‘s (1982) estimatation, there are around 25.000 German words that count as adjectives (cf. ibid.: 17). Such measures are obviously down to a theory of the mental lexicon – thus, for example, if we were to count every deverbal adjective on –bar ever attested in texts, we would likely derive a higher number. Eichinger (2007: 150) claims the non-derived core of the class to be relatively small with roughly 200 types.

20

The word class ‘adjective’

degree, primary functions, it is safe to say that all grammars agree that the majority of them are used in different syntactic environments. Broadly following the notion of centrality of membership of a word class, Motsch (2002: 598) identifies the five syntactic environments in (10) in which “many of the words usually classified as adjectives” are used (my translation; the environments are each illustrated with examples for the prototypical adjective schön ‘beautiful’): (10) a. ATTRIBUTIVE USE The adjective is part of an NP19 and prenominally modifies a noun, the head of the phrase. It is morphologically marked, inflecting20 for case, number, and gender depending on the determiner (DET) and the head noun: ein schönes Kleid ‘a beautiful dress’ ein schöner Mann ‘a beautiful man’ b. APPOSITIVE USE The adjective is part of an NP, modifies the noun postnominally, and does not inflect: Der Pass, wunderschön, überraschte die Verteidigung. The pass AUG -beautiful surprised the defense. c. PREDICATIVE USE In combination with a copula verb, the adjective is part of a predicate phrase (i.e. the main predicate) and usually relates to the sentential subject. It does not inflect: Lisa ist schön. ‘Lisa is beautiful.’ Die Häuser sind schön. ‘The houses are beautiful.’ d. ADJUNCTIVE (ADVERBIAL) USE 21 The adjective is integrated into a Verb Phrase (VP) (or a higher sentential projection) and modifies an event or a complete proposition. It does not inflect: 19 I remain noncommittal here with regard to the DP-hypothesis, yet will adopt it in ch.3. 20 Inflectional properties of Determiner Phrases (DP) and NPs are not of primary interest here; see e.g. Gallmann (1996); Sternefeld (2008: 78–83); Weinrich et al. (2005: 480–496), or Zifonun et al. (1997: 46–47) for overviews. 21 ‘Adjunctive’ is Motsch’s (2002) term – ‘adverbial’, however, is by far more common as a label and I fail to see in how far Motsch’s terminology goes along with differences in the syntactic environments he has in mind. Thus, it seems unclear whether adjectives in this use are more ‘adjunct-like’ than in attributive use. I will employ ‘adverbial’ in the remainder of this study. For a different use of the term adjunctive adjective in opposition to its attributive use, namely as dislocatable entities, see Engel (1991: 628–630). For adverbial adjectives and their interpretational properties see Schäfer (2011).

Cross-linguistic and language-specific

21

Der Tänzer bewegt sich schön zur Musik. ‘The dancer moves beautifully to the music.’ Die Kinder erzählten schön von ihren Erlebnissen. ‘The children beautifully narrated their adventures.’ e. ADJECTIVE - MODIFYING USE The adjective is part of an Adjective Phrase (AP) and modifies another adjective, the head of the phrase. It does not inflect: ein schön geschriebener Roman ‘a beautifully written novel’ viele schön erklärte Beispiele ‘many nicely explained examples’ The terminology in this respect differs from author to author, as does subsuming different syntactic environments into superordinate classes or keeping them apart.22 Yet, the two phenomena central to this study, attributive and predicative use, tend to be uniformly kept apart and mostly labelled as above (for the semantic contribution of the two uses and their intricate relationship see 1.2.1.). Therefore, I will not recapitulate the debate whether the occurrences in (10d), i.e. the adverbial use, are in fact adjectives used adverbially or rather conversion (or zero-derivation) phenomena of the kind Adj →Adv, but join the majority view and treat them as adverbial adjectives (for discussion and arguments to that effect see e.g. Schäfer 2013: 21–23; Trost 2006: 5–10). Furthermore, I remain agnostic as regards the classification of certain notoriously controversial expressions, as their status does not decisively inform the main points of this study. Among these elements are, in particular, cardinal and ordinal numbers as well as quantifiers (such as drei ‘three’, dritter ‘third’, or viele ‘many’, respectively).23

22 For example, Weinrich et al. (2005) only distinguish three functions, subsuming adverbial (10d) and adjective-modifying (10e) uses under the label applikativ ‘applicative’ as well as treating appositive (10b) as part of attributive (10a) use (ibid.: 477–480). The Duden (2005: 347–361), in turn, distinguishes four uses out of which der substantivierte Gebrauch ‘the nominalized use’ is not covered by Motsch (it is also unclear in how far this ‘use’ differs from conversion / derivation). Of Motsch’s (2002) five uses in (10a-e) the Duden collapses (10a) and (10b) as well as (10d) and (10e). 23 These items do not remotely manifest prototypicality – see, e.g. Motsch (1964: 76–77) for arguments against treating numerals as adjectives. However, they are oftentimes – especially in the descriptive tradition of German philology – classified as adjectives due their canonical positions in between a DET or article and a noun, i.e. inside the Nominalklammer ‘nominal brace’; see, for example, Engel (1991), who defines adjectives as “words without constant gender that can be positioned in between determiner and noun” (ibid.: 556; my translation).

The word class ‘adjective’

22

Besides canonically appearing in the syntactic environments in (10) above, prototypical adjectives are gradable and have comparison forms. Semantically speaking, the properties they encode are scalable, i.e. either a nominal concept can exhibit a property concept to different degrees or different entities can be compared as regards these degrees (cf. e.g. Bierwisch 1989; Demonte 2011; Kennedy 2007; McNally to appear; see 1.2.2.4. for a more detailed account as well as non-gradable adjectives). Gradable German adjectives prototypically form the comparative and superlative with –er and –est, respectively, and can be degree-modified by a variety of lexical means (again, prototypical schön is used for illustration): (11)

a.

COMPARATIVE FORM

das schönere Mädchen ‘the more beautiful girl’ b.

SUPERLATIVE FORM

das schönste Mädchen ‘the most beautiful girl’ c.

DEGREE MODIFICATION

das sehr schöne Mädchen ‘the very beautiful girl’ das äußerst schöne Mädchen ‘the extremely beautiful girl’ Thus, restricting the canonical positions to the ones of particular concern here, we find a tentative yet workable definition for the prototypical morphosyntactic behavior of adjectives in Schäfer (2013): »Adjectives form a lexical category that is defined by the following characteristics: adjectives canonically appear in attributive and predicative position, have comparison forms, and are inflected for gender, number and case as required by agreement with their head noun.« (ibid.: 17)

Given the notion of prototypicality, i.e. the features that make up the test battery, it consequently follows that a variety of adjectival subclasses comply with a subset of these tests only. The following subsections introduce subclasses within the adjectival domain, i.e. systematic deviance from prototypical behavior. Drawing on formal semantic, descriptive, as well as syntactic approaches, a variety of subclassifications and oppositions established in the literature are illustrated.

Semantics and subclassification of adjectives

23

1.2 Semantics and subclassification of adjectives24 1.2.1 Two dichotomies In categorial grammar and extensional semantics, the standard treatment for the majority of adjectives (12c) is the same as for intransitive verbs (12a) and common (predicate) nouns (12b) (cf. Heim & Kratzer 1998: ch. 4). Neglecting cases of more-place adjectives, they are understood as one-place predicates and functions from entities to truth values, i.e. they are of semantic type .25 Demonte (2011) illustrates this view for all three categories, in which the lambda terms following the expressions represent the composition of the meanings of two expressions as functions applied to arguments (examples adapted from ibid.: 1314–1315): (12)

a.

Irene works –

λx [WORK(x)](Irene)

b.

Irene is a primatologist –

λx [PRIMATOLOGIST(x)](Irene)

c.

Irene is happy –

λx [HAPPY(x)](Irene)

Defining (one-place) adjectives as type 26 captures the example in (6c) well; in fact, it seems generalizable to all adjectives in predicative use (cf. e.g. Siegel 1980). Furthermore, standardly assuming the copula to be pleonastic or semantically vacuous (i.e. only featuring as a syntactic host for tense and agreement; see e.g. Heim & Kratzer 1998: 61–62), there is an apparent conformity between

24 Not only is the body of literature on the classification of adjectives and their modification patterns huge, it is also a veritable terminological nightmare. Frequently, the same term happens to be used for three, four, or five opposing subclasses in the works of different authors. For example, a ‘simple’ adjective such as large may be, depending on the author, classified under the headings ‘relative’, ‘intensional’, ‘subsective’, ‘intersective’, or ‘non-intersective’, while at least the latter three notions are often considered mutually exclusive. In turn, for example, ‘intensional’ and ‘non-intersective’ as well as ‘relative’ and ‘subsective’ tend to often be used tantamountly. In the following, I will hopefully succeed in both disentangling some of these notions as well as describing their commonalities in different uses. 25 Individual entities are type , while truth values are type – a simple semantic predicate in the Montagovian sense is then of type , applying to individuals and returning truth values (cf. Demonte 2011; Heim & Kratzer 1998; Montague 1974). 26 E.g. two-place adjectives such as neidisch in Peter ist auf Lara neidisch ‘Peter is envious of Lara’ would be assigned the more complex type . I will largely neglect more-place adjectives throughout this study.

The word class ‘adjective’

24

the complex meanings of a common noun (CN) and an adjective for many cases in predicative (13a) and attributive uses (13b): (13)

a.

Dieses Haus ist rot. ‘This house is red.’

b.

Dies ist ein rotes Haus. ‘This is a red house.’

A lot of the compositional issues in (formal) semantics regarding adjectives in attributive and predicative uses revolve around the types one needs to assume for an adjective in either of them (the following paragraphs are largely based on Heim & Kratzer (1998) and Morzycki (in prep.)). The basic composition operation, building up on Frege’s conjecture that unsaturated meanings have to be applied to arguments for saturation, is function application (FA). Heim & Kratzer’s (1998: 44) definition runs as follows: (14) functional application (FA) If α is a branching node, β and γ are α’s daughters, and〚β〛is a function whose domain contains〚γ〛, then〚α〛=〚β〛(〚γ〛). Applied to the predicative example in (13a), under the assumption of red being a one-place adjective of type , the predicative copula being of type (cf. e.g. Partee 1977), and the definite DP an individual , saturation can schematically be derived as in (15): (15)

The problem that arises when transferring FA to the attributive use of the ‘same’ adjective as a modifier is the type-mismatch in (16a) – the absolute noun house as well the adjective red being one-place predicates (), neither can saturate the other yielding a truth-value or a further unsaturated type. A possible way out is the assumption of a more complex type for predicate modifiers, e.g. adjectives in attributive use, as of type as in (16b), which again is interpretable by means of FA:

Semantics and subclassification of adjectives

(16)

a.

25

b.

For examples such as the one at hand, however, the apparent conformity of expressions like (13a) and (13b) has led to the theoretical desideratum of ensuring type consistency. Heim & Kratzer’s (1998: 65) rule of predicate modification (PM) is custom-made for structures of type (16a) (cf. also Higginbotham 1985). (17) is a slight rephrasing of Heim & Kratzer’s original (cf. Morzycki in prep.: 10–11), which allows the top node of (16a) to be of the same type as unmodified house, i.e. : (17)

predicate modification (PM) If α is a branching node, β and γ are α’s daughters, and〚β〛and〚γ〛are both of type , then〚α〛= λx .〚β〛(x) ∧〚γ〛(x)

1.2.1.1 Attributive vs predicative use Leaving (some of) the intricacies of modification to the following below (1.2.2. in particular), (15)–(17) at least show that for certain adjectives, to which red seems to belong, a fairly uniform semantic contribution is oftentimes assumed. Very much in this vein, for example, Motsch (2002) assumes the same general semantic effect to hold for the two uses – the adjective’s semantic representation includes at least one argument slot for the word it applies to. Predicatively, the argument slot is occupied by the sentential subject NP/DP, while attributively by the head noun of the NP/DP the adjective is a part of (cf. also Bierwisch 1989). Thus, the “predicate conglomerate of a noun is supplemented with an adjectival predicate, i.e. a further predicate is added to an entity, or a collection of entities, and the predicates associated with the noun’s semantics” (Motsch 2002: 602; my translation). While in principle non-determined with respect to the primacy of either attributive or predicative structures, this view reflects in particular the treatment of adjectives in early generative grammar, where all attributive adjectives were understood as transformations from relative clauses via successive application of different syntactic rules (cf. e.g. Chomsky 1957; 1965; Motsch 1964; Smith 1964; Vendler 1968; see Bartsch & Vennemann 1972: ch.2 for an overview). The line of analysis known as the ‘reductionist hypothesis’ involves the following typical steps (18) (adopted from Alexiadou et al. 2007: 294):

The word class ‘adjective’

26 (18)

a.

the man who is old

b.

→

the man old 27

(‘Whiz Deletion’, i.e. deletion of who is)

c.

→

the old man

(‘Adjective Shift’)28

For example, Vendler (1968) states that “in a great number of cases AN is nothing but a product of the restrictive N wh. . . is A: (A’) AN ⇦ N wh. . . is A” (ibid.: 87; italics in the original). Likewise, Chomsky (1957) explicitly endorses this kind of operation in the course of general attempts in transformational grammar to reduce the complexity of kernel sentences – and thus the derivation of more complex non-kernels: »One of the nominalizing transformations will be the transformation Tad; which operates on any string of the form [. . .] T – N – is – Adj (i.e., article – noun – is – adjective) and converts it into the corresponding noun phrase of the form T + Adj + N. Thus, it converts “the boy is tall” into “the tall boy,” etc. It is not difficult to show that this transformation simplifies the grammar considerably, and that it must go in this, not the opposite direction.« (Chomsky 1957: 72; italics in the original)

In this sense, speaking with Motsch (2002), the difference between predicative and attributive use boils down to communicative categories of conveying information – as a full-fledged speech act in predicative and as conceptual modification embedded in sentences in attributive use. Predicative use at the same time requires the speaker to anchor the propositional content of a sentence in time (via tense) and as regards mood, while in attributive use, a property ascribed to a noun concept is merely integrated into the nominal structure (cf. ibid.: 602). However, considerable doubt has been cast on the ‘reductionist hypothesis’ in its strong from – i.e. as deriving all prenominal adjectives via transformations from relative clauses – at least since Bolinger’s (1967) seminal paper ‘Adjectives in English: Attribution and Predication’. As is well known, a variety of adjectives can either not occur predicatively (19), not attributively (20), or shift in meaning 27 The postnominal position is considered an intermediate step here between predicative adjectives in a relative clause and prenominal attributive use (cf. Alexiadou et al. 293–294). This is the reason why, for example, Cinque (2010) and Ramaglia (2011) consider all English adjectives in postnominal position ‘reduced relatives’ (but not all prenominal ones, see below). The position is fairly restricted in English (the ungrammaticality of *the man old being a case in point; see Pullum & Huddleston 2002 for an overview), while it is quasi-negligible in German (except for appositive modification, see (10b) above). 28 For an overview of ‘Whiz Deletion‘ and ‘Adjective Shift’, see Ramaglia (2011: 39–41).

Semantics and subclassification of adjectives

27

(or are ambiguous) depending on their position (21).29 This has been amply demonstrated for English (but, despite several differences, holds equally for German) and concerns a variety of different adjectival subclasses (see e.g. Bolinger 1967; Coppock 2009: ch.5; Levi 1978; Siegel 1980: 58 for such cases in English; see e.g. Motsch 1964; Engel 1991; Trost 2006 for German): (19) a.

a true poet

– */?The poet is true.30

a.’ ein wahrer Dichter

– *Der Dichter ist wahr.

b.

– *The murderer is alleged.

the alleged murderer

b.’ der mutmaßliche Mörder

– *Der Mörder ist mutmaßlich.

c.

– *The reason is precise.

the precise reason

c.’ der genaue Grund

– *Der Grund ist genau.

d.

– */?The tension is electric.

the electric tension

d.’ die elektrische Spannung

– */?Die Spannung ist elektrisch. – *the asleep man

(20) a. The man is asleep. b. The people are alive.

– *the alive people

c. Das Kind ist allein. ‘The kid is alone.’

– *das alleine Kind

d. Der Grund ist egal. ‘The reason does not matter.’

– *der egale Grund

(21) a.

my old friend

– My friend is old.31

a.’ mein alter Freund

– Mein Freund ist alt.

b.

a heavy smoker

– The smoker is heavy.

b.’ ein starker Raucher

– Der Raucher ist stark.

c.

– The loser is sore.

a sore loser

c.’ ein schlechter Verlierer

– Der Verlierer ist schlecht.

The reasons in (19)–(21) for either denying the adjective one of the two possible positions or for position-bound meaning shifts are manifold. The examples in (19a/a’) and (19b/b’) are all modal adjectives that can oftentimes be paraphrased by an adverb (cf. Coppock 2009: 171–174; Levi 1978: 7–8) and mostly concern the

29 Many of the English examples in (19)–(21) are due to Coppock (2009) and Bolinger (1967). 30 The ‘-examples are fairly consistent and largely literal German translations; this procedure is not possible for the examples in (20). 31 Again, ‘-examples are translations (though less literal than the ones in (19)).

The word class ‘adjective’

28

veridicality of a nominal concept in a given context.32 (19c/c’) are what Coppock refers to as ‘adjectives of selection’ that have to do with “picking something out from a list [and] uniquely specify a particular entity” (ibid.: 174–175), while (19d/d’) are cases of relational adjectives that essentially establish subkinds of the kinds denoted by the noun they modify (see 1.2.2.3.). The examples in (21) – leaving aside (20) for the moment (see the next section) – are different, yet related in nature. At least in principle, the attributive cases to the left are ambiguous in isolation and have, limiting the discussion to the English examples, the two respective readings in (22): (22)

a(i).

someone who has been a friend for a long time

a(ii).

a friend and old for a human being

b(i).

someone who smokes a lot (heavily)

b(ii).

a smoker who weighs a lot (is heavy in weight)

c(i).

someone who behaves ungentlemanly in defeat

c(ii).

a loser who e.g. has got friction burns (got sore)

These are cases sometimes referred to as ‘Bolinger contrasts’ or ‘Bolinger effects’ (see Cinque 2010; Larson 1999). In all of them, the (i)-readings are surely the ones suggesting themselves and the likely interpretations outside of strong contexts indicating otherwise. Nonetheless, the (ii)-readings do exist (see e.g. Alexiadou et al. 2007; Cinque 2010; Larson 1998; Ramaglia 2011; Siegel 1980) and explanations for these ambiguities have been manifold (see in particular the intersective vs non-intersective dichotomy and the remarks on eventive nouns in 1.2.2.3. below). Crucially, however, the (ii)-readings seem the only ones available for the predicative structures on the right hand side in (21). For example, The smoker is heavy. clearly eludes the reading in (22bi); the same holds for the predicative structures in (21a) and (21c) and the respective readings in (22ai) and (22ci), while the corresponding (ii)-readings are possible. A note on terminology is in place here: On the basis of the interpretational differences just presented, several authors call those adjectives ‘predicative’ that can be used attributively as well as predicatively without (presumably) shifting the modificational semantics or their meaning (cf. e.g. Kamp 1975; Parsons 1970; see Levi 1978 for the essentially same distinction between what she calls ‘predicating’ and ‘non-predicating’ adjectives). ‘Predicative’ is then understood 32 The majority of authors treat these expressions as adjectives (in fact, they have generated a great many number of analyses in the semantics literature on adjectives; see e.g. Kamp 1975). Sometimes a separate word class is assumed; see e.g. Bickes’s (1984) arguments in favor of a class Modalwort ‘modal word’.

Semantics and subclassification of adjectives

29

in purely semantic terms and we find, for example, a concrete distinction between ‘semantic predicativity’ and predicative use – the former being a prerequisite of the latter – in Coppock’s (2009) ‘predicativity principle’: “An adjective can be syntactically predicative if and only if it is semantically predicative” (ibid.: 169). This is not necessarily a framework- or tradition-specific view; for example, in the descriptive tradition of German linguistics we find the concept of implizite Prädikation ‘implicit predication’ for these cases in attributive use (cf. Eichinger 1992). I will not, however, adopt any of this terminology here and, if not explicitly stated otherwise, use ‘predicatively’ only in syntactic terms as specified in (10) above, viz., tantamount to ‘predicative use’

1.2.1.2 Referent- vs reference-modification Getting back to the preliminary definition above of one-place adjectives as type predicates, i.e. applying to individuals and returning truth values, the contrasts in (19) and (21) appear less astonishing. Bolinger (1967) attests a “a clear functional difference between predicative modification and attributive modification” (ibid.: 1) – the former typically being what he calls ‘referentmodification’, the latter ‘reference-modification’. Given the diversity attested for the oppositions in (19)–(21), the two concepts are cover terms for different, yet related phenomena with common surface effects (see also Bickes 198433). Bolinger argues that in referent-modification it is the in some way already established reference of an NP that is modified, while reference-modification intervenes in the nominal reference system as such – in this sense, the two concepts are very closely related to the distinction between extension- and intension-modification (see e.g. Fitting 2014; Higginbotham 1985; Partee 1995). Thus, modification of a noun with a ‘pre-established’ nominal reference system via an adjective in predicative use amounts to applying a predicate to a logical individual and can be accomplished by an -type adjective, while a possibly more complex type – for example, , mapping properties to properties – is necessary for modifying reference. The adjective in the ambiguous expression a heavy smoker (21b), for example, is a predicate that either applies to the individual (or referent), i.e., for example, heavy qua a taxonomical supercategory ‘human being’ or ‘object’, or to the word-internal verbal base, i.e. qua smoking (cf. 33 Bickes (1984) makes the essentially same distinction as regards interpretational differences between attributive and predicative uses – he, however, rejects Bolinger’s terminology on theoretical grounds (as, in a stricter sense, it is not words that refer or have reference but speakers who perform referential acts) and introduces the terms charakteristisches Merkmal ‘characteristic feature’ and Eigenschaftsträger ‘bearer of a property’ (cf. ibid.: 82–84; 95–99).

30

The word class ‘adjective’

Larson 1998; Siegel 1980). It is important to note that reference- and referentmodification is not used synonymously with restrictive and non-restrictive. While the latter distinction is also about establishing a referent in a given context, it does not (necessarily) interfere with the nominal reference system as such (cf. e.g. Partee 1995: 317–322; on restrictive and non-restrictive modification see 1.2.2.). Bolinger himself correctly qualifies the seemingly clear-cut overlap of ‘predicative use = referent-modification’ and ‘attributive use = reference-modification’ when he states that the examples in (19)–(21) are extremes and that ‘blending’ between adjectival use and modification type “frequently – perhaps more often than not – takes place between the two” (Bolinger 1967: 23). The following remarks are worth quoting at length and illustrate the intricate relationship between adjectival and nominal concepts that is crucially based on the dual function of nouns: »While a drowsy policeman scarcely refers to someone who is drowsy qua policeman, a friendly policeman does suggest friendliness in the way in which policemen manifest it – courtesy in dealing with the public, helpfulness to old ladies, good fellowship along the beat. A happy agent suggests one who is happy about his work. The agent is happy allows of any meaning of happy that can go with a Human [sic] subject – wearing a happy expression on his face as readily as happy qua agent. Blending is to be expected, given the nature of nouns, which both name classes and designate individuals, often doing both things at once. In their capacity as namers of classes they take reference-modification; as designators of individuals they take referent-modification.« (Bolinger 1967: 23; italics in the original)

REFERENT- AND REFERENCE - MODIFICATION AND TEMPORARINESS

On a different, yet related note, Bolinger explicitly conflates his two modification types with a further dimension: temporariness. In the more recent literature, arguments along these lines can for example be found in Sadler & Arnold (1994) or Svenonius (1994), who all argue for prenominal modification being essentially correlated with permanent property ascriptions, while predicative use (and, in English, postnominal use) allows for temporary property concepts. Pre-theoretically, it seems obvious that a property that is incorporated in the reference system of a noun is less likely of temporary nature, in case it can be at all, than one that is not. A feature that is crucial in establishing a respective class or kind will arguably hold of an entity with a certain degree of permanence (on kinds see e.g. Krifka et al. 1995; Mueller-Reichau 2006; and ch.4); one that is not can more easily be of temporary nature. Thus, criminal in a criminal lawyer in its salient reading establishes a subclass of lawyers, those specializing in criminal law (cf. Gunkel & Zifonun 2009; McNally & Boleda 2004), and the only navigable river typically refers to the only river out of a given set of rivers that

Semantics and subclassification of adjectives

31

falls in the class of navigable ones. On the other hand, the only river navigable is, according to Bolinger, unambiguously interpreted as a transitory property that holds momentarily, e.g. due weather conditions.34 In this respect, the author also calls attention to the possibility of prenominal past participle adjectives in English (23) and questions of permanence (cf. Bolinger 1967: 09): (23)

a.

a scratched surface

a.’ *a scratched head b.

labeled goods

b.’ *sent goods c.

dented bells

c.’ *rung bells While labeled goods are permanently labeled as well as arguably refer to a certain class of goods, i.e. one that is of cultural relevance and also linguistically wellestablished, a scratched surface and dented bells typically at least show the results of the actions performed upon them. The ‘-examples, however, do not – in any easily accessible sense – denote subclasses of the classes denoted by the head nouns and are not stigmatized – in terms of enduring and/or visible results – in the way the grammatical examples are. The list of predicative-only adjectives, already touched upon in (20) above, is also of interest in this regard. For German, these items are at times denied adjective-status altogether (see, among others, Eichinger 2007; Engel 1991; Zifonun et al. 1997 for arguments in favor of a separate word class Kopulapartikel ‘copula particle’ or Adkopula ‘adcopula’) and constitute a marginal phenomenon at best (cf. Sternefeld 2008: 236). Irrespective of their status, though, it is peculiar that they predominantly appear to assign rather temporary states or properties to an individual. The list in (24) is a partial adoption from Engel’s (1991: 767–768) list (which includes 40 items in total and the author claims to be near-exhaustive for German):35 34 Note that in this case Bolinger (1967: 3–4) argues the predicative structure The only river that is navigable is to the north to be ambiguous – he uses the example to challenge the reductionist hypothesis, in particular the suitability of the intermediate step illustrated in (18b). One reviewer remarks that the different readings may boil down to scope differences of the focus particle only. I do not quite see in how far the prenominal-postnominal alternation affects scope, though. In both cases, the particle scopes over the complete AN- and NA-clusters, respectively. Restrictive quantification, however, plays a crucial role in admitting postnominal adjectives in the first place; see 4.2.3. 35 The items in the list take different copula-verbs, i.e. not all of them are compatible with a form of sein ‘to be’. The selectional restrictions will not be enumerated here; see Engel (1991: 767–768) in this respect.

The word class ‘adjective’

32

(24) GERMAN PREDICATIVE - ONLY ADJECTIVES abhold ‘averse’, abspenstig ‘alienating’; allein ‘alone’; angst ‘afraid’; barfuß ‘barefooted’; fit ‘fit’; gewillt ‘willing’; leid ‘fed up’; perplex ‘bewildered’; pleite ‘broke’; quitt ‘(to be) even’; futsch ‘bust’; meschugge ‘meshugga’; plemplem ‘cuckoo’; zu ‘closed’36 etc. (Most of) the expression in (24) feature felicitously in several grammatical environments that are often argued to call for stage-level (SL) predicates, which in turn are considered to be closely – yet intricately – connected to temporariness; see ch.2. While the list appears by and large descriptively adequate, it must be pointed out that at least some of these presumably predicative-only adjective in fact do feature in attributive use, as well. The data in (25) illustrate such cases with the DPs in question underlined: (25)

a.

Der perplexe Mann lässt sofort von der Dame ab und flüchtet unerkannt.37 ‘The bewildered man immediately lets go off the lady and escapes unrecognized.’

b.

?Folglich

wäre wohl der meschuggene Rebbe aus Nazareth nicht am Kreuz gestorben, sondern im Bett.38 ‘Hence, the crazy rabbi from Nazareth would probably not have died on a cross but in bed.’

c.

5 Gründe, warum fitte Frauen mehr Spaß im Bett haben39 ‘5 reasons why fit women have a better time in bed’

d.

?eine

zuene Tür40 ‘a closed door’

36 Zu ‘closed’ is colloquial German and its status as an adjective, copula particle or possibly even a verb particle is unclear (cf. zumachen ‘to close’ / zuschließen ‘to lock’). However, its not completely impossible attributive use (cf. the example in (25d)) makes the latter (two) classification(s), in particular as a verb particle, seem inappropriate. 37 Cf. 38 Cf. 39 Cf. 40 The example is strongly marked to ungrammatical to many German speakers and not considered Standard German – at least in Southern Hessian, however, it is not uncommon.

Semantics and subclassification of adjectives

33

While capturing what should count as ‘temporary’ is as far from trivial as the grammatical force of the notion, it seems correct that the German predicativeonlys in (24) are most likely of transitory nature. Moreover, adjective acquisition in English and Italian appear to reinforce Bolinger’s sentiment that predicative use is at least partly associated with temporariness, whereas attributive use is conflated with permanence. Both the studies in Blackwell (2005) for English and Cardinaletti & Giusti (2011) for Italian report on comparable acquisition data: Lexical acquisition of adjectives denoting temporary property concepts is not delayed, yet occurs primarily in isolation or in predicative use. In contrast, time-stable concepts are used prenominally from an earlier stage on. Crucially, though, prenominal use – in both languages – of all expressions in question is attested for all children surveyed from later stages on (see in particular Cardilanetti & Giusti 2011: 89–91 for an explicit link of these data and the SL-ILdichotomy discussed in ch.2). Hence, the role of temporariness in admitting prenominal use is blurred and already Bolinger rightly asks: “How temporary must a temporary adjective be for attributive position to reject it? There is obviously no measure for this” (Bolinger 1967: 10). For example, the author’s own example of a drowsy policeman calls into question the absoluteness of the distinction, given that drowsiness has to be considered a typically fairly short-lived physical state of humans. Equally, the German examples with (in their likely / intuitive interpretations) temporary adjectives in (26) are obviously perfectly fine (as are their English equivalents): (26)

a.

ein müdes Kind ‘a tired kid’

b.

der hungrige Junge ‘the hungry boy’

c.

der leere Marktplatz ‘the empty market square’

There clearly is no grammatical constraint that blocks adnominal use or occurrence of such items. Moreover, if we compare what we may pre-theoretically call typical temporary and permanent adjectives, respectively, in a superficial and non-adjusted corpus search with respect to their distributions in attributive and predicative use, results point to a slight relative difference at best. Searching the TAGGED-T archive of DeReKo (Deutsches Referenzkorpus)41 for the four adjectives schön ‘beautiful’, gelb ‘yellow’, müde ‘tired’, and hungrig ‘hungry’ returns the absolute numbers and ratios of the two uses in Table 1 (tired and hungry have been described as stage-level (SL) predicates in the literature. 41 Accessible via the search software cosmas2–web of the Institut für deutsche Sprache (IDS); see .

34

The word class ‘adjective’

Beautiful and yellow are usually more time-stable and have been described as individual-level (IL)): Table 1: Absolute predicative and attributive occurrences and respective ratios of adjectives schön, gelb, müde, and hungrig from a COSMAS IIweb / TAGGED-T search. time-stability

adjective

attributive

predicative

ratio42

typically time-stable

schön gelb

158.697 27.924

11.981 316

~13:1 ~88:1

typically temporary

müde hungrig

841 303

~5:1 ~10:1

4.134 3.032

For several reasons, this corpus search is not representative and should not be taken as such; a thorough corpus-search for a variety of ‘temporary’ adjectives and their behavior with respect to ordering restrictions (not the predicativeattributive distinction, though) is provided in ch.3.43 It does, however, illustrate at least two points: (i) irrespective of whether we are dealing with temporary or more permanent adjectives, attributive outnumbers predicative use, and (ii) the ratio difference between the two ‘time-stable’ adjectives is by far greater than the difference between schön, on the one hand, and the two ‘temporary’ adjectives, on the other. Obviously, a more thorough search – taking into account more adjectives as well as distinguishing between different senses – would be needed to make concrete claims as regards distributional differences (or similarities). Moreover, usage frequencies may be regarded irrelevant truth-conditionally as well as with respect to grammatical architecture, and, therefore, better treated within the realm of a “theory of conditions of use and processing” (Hamann 1991: 664). 42 Ratios are rounded off. 43 Regarding the superficial search here: First, predicative use only takes into account occurrences of the adjectives after a grammatical word-form of sein ‘be’, not of other copula verbs such as werden ‘become’ or scheinen ‘seem’. Given this search syntax, predicative structures in many German subordinate clauses are not captured due to SOV-word order, either. Second, different adjectival senses are lumped together and not systematically kept apart. Also, idiomatic expressions that arguably call for a separate treatment have not been controlled for (in particular gelb ‘yellow’ appears to very frequently occur as part of lexicalized AN-phrases in attributive use, e.g. gelbe Karte ‘yellow card’ or gelbes Trikot ‘yellow jersey’ – this may well be at the heart of the extreme ratio for this adjective). The search also does not reflect, in how far different senses may carry different ‘values’ as regards temporality, e.g. in müder Wahlkampf ‘uninspired political campaign’ (lit. ‘tired election_battle’); schön is also highly polysemous or underspecified semantically. Random sampling suggests, though, that in the vast majority of cases the respective adjectives are being used in senses that encode the rough distinction between more transitory and more permanent properties.

Semantics and subclassification of adjectives

35

With all due caution, however, such distributions at best point to attributive use having primacy over predicative use. Also, the fact that in English and German by far more adjectives appear to be of the ‘attributive-only’ than of the ‘predicative-only’ type may be taken as an indicator for this assumption, as well as the general tendency to show higher degrees of polysemy- or ambiguitypotential in attributive position. Although Demonte’s (2011) claim that “all authors agree the primary function of adjectives is to modify nouns directly in structures like an intelligent person” (ibid.: 1315; italics in the original)44 is certainly a crass generalization, it is in line with many analyses of various backgrounds (cf. e.g. Bennett 1976; Cresswell 1976; Croft 2000; Eichinger 1982; 1987; Montague 1974). While mapping temporariness of the properties encoded by adjectival predicates to the attributive-predicative opposition seems weak and unsystematic, preferred orders of multiple prenominal adjectives possibly provide a different testbed for temporariness as a factor in the syntax and semantics of adnominal modification. Consider the acceptability differences in (27):45 (27)

a.

a navigabletemporary navigableclass river

a.’

*/?a navigableclass navigabletemporary river

b.

ein müdes albanisches Kind ‘a tired Albanian kid’

b.’

*ein albanisches müdes Kind ‘an Albanian tired kid’

c.

der leere runde Marktlatz ‘the empty round market square’

c.’

?der

runde leere Marktplatz ‘the round empty market square’

In their most conventional readings, Albanian, round, and navigableclass are all uncontroversially more time-stable than tired, empty, and navigabletemporary. Thus, several authors offer possible refinements of Bolinger’s division, arguing the distinction to not be a matter of temporary expressions being banned from adnominal modification but about structural proximity of modifiers in relation to the modified noun (cf. Cinque 2010; Larson 1998; Ramaglia 2011). Questions of genericity and temporariness, in particular the distinction between stage-level and individual-level, will be discussed in chs.2/4, the order of prenominal adjectives, in particular in German, in chs.3/4. There, the questionnaire and corpus studies reported on take up and test some of the relationships between the phenomena. The next section introduces some of the pertinent typologies used

44 See Hamann (1991) for an overview of theories that take predication to have primacy. 45 The acceptability differences refer to the expressions read with flat intonation and no particular contrasting focus put on either adjective; see ch.3 for details.

The word class ‘adjective’

36

for subclassifying adjectives and related issues concerning their compositional semantics as modifiers.

1.2.2 Adjective typologies and modification Concentrating on attributive adjectival modification raises the question of how ‘modifier’ is to be understood. The notoriously problematic distinction between the semantic notions ‘modifier’ and ‘argument’ (as well as, roughly, their syntactic counterparts ‘adjunct’ and ‘complement’) is blurred if taken as the difference between, on the one hand, non-essential, additional content provided by modifiers (and/or adjuncts) and essential, non-dispensable content provided by arguments (complements) (for an overview of syntactic arguments on the distinction see Sternefeld 2008: 719–728). Consider the two phrases in (28) (examples and ensuing discussion based on McNally to appear: 1–3): (28)

a.

Peters nette Mutter ‘Peter’s nice mother’

b.

Peters jüngerer Bruder ‘Peter’s younger brother’

(28a) is usually analyzed fairly straightforwardly: Mutter is a relational noun, as such unsaturated, i.e. every mother is someone’s mother, and provides an open argument slot. The genitive NP Peters saturates the argument slot and is thus regarded as more essential than nett, which merely provides additional information on Peter’s mother. Nett, for this reason, is usually attributed modifier status. Obviously, (28b) complicates such a straightforward analysis. In case Peter has more than one brother, it is difficult to argue that or in how far the contribution of jüngerer is less essential than the one of Peters. In both cases, however, the adjectives are “universally treated as modifiers, not arguments” (McNally to appear: 02; see also Dowty 1982; Heim & Kratzer 1998; Partee 1995). Following this treatment of attributive adjectives, I will not discuss the argument-modifier dichotomy in any depth here but concur with McNally’s formal approximation to the term ‘modifier’: »The notion of modification cannot be understood without the prior assumption, at least as old as Aristotle, that language makes a distinction between the basic entities we ascribe properties to and the properties we ascribe to them via predication. Assume that the fundamental distinction between these basic entities and properties is that the former are saturated, that is, semantically complete in some sense, while the latter are unsaturated, that is, semantically incomplete. [. . .] If we make this assumption, we can define modifier as: [. . .] an expression that combines with an unsaturated expression to form another expression of the same type.« (McNally to appear: 2)

Semantics and subclassification of adjectives

37

Thus, following PM as introduced in (17), we can account for a modifier analysis of the adjectives in both (28a) and (28b) as well as for argument status of John’s. Understanding the relational noun mother as type > and the proper name John as , the combination John’s mother is saturated and of type by means of FA (see (14)), i.e. reduced in valence. Assuming type for adjectives, as we have tentatively in the preceding section, as well as the predicate modification rule in (17), the combination of cool or younger with John’s mother (also of type ) returns another -expression, i.e. the adjective’s contribution is not valence-affecting. In Heim & Kratzer’s (1998) words: “Arguments reduce the adicity of the noun they combine with; modifiers leave it unchanged” (ibid.: 64). In contrast, the restrictive meaning contribution of younger in (28b) can be captured by means of the standard modification-internal opposition between restrictive and non-restrictive modification.46 In many cases, AN-combinations are ambiguous between a restrictive and a non-restrictive reading in isolation, so that the adjective’s character can only be decided based on contextual information. Below, restrictive in (29a), non-restrictive in (29b), and ambiguous modifiers in (29c) are illustrated: (29)

a.

the house which is tall

b.

the house, which is tall,47

c.

the tall house

The general distinction is usually analyzed as a difference between denotation restriction – hence the name – in the case of restrictive modification and mere additional information about the entity that heads the referring expression, usually a noun. Thus, (29a) will usually be used in order to pick out a certain house out of a group of houses, i.e. DP-reference has to be established, while knowledge which house is referred to in (29b) can be presupposed. Finally, prenominal tall in (29c) can either be restrictive or non-restrictive,48 depending 46 Non-restrictive modification is also called appositive (as well as parenthetic or applicative; see Fabricius-Hansen 2009), but as I have established appositive as a syntactic position in (10) following Motsch (2002), I will use non-restrictive for the semantic notion. 47 German relative clauses are always separated with commas – in spoken German as in English, however, non-restrictive relative clauses are oftentimes set apart prosodically with pauses and a separate intonation contour (for German see e.g. Eisenberg 2006: 271–272; for English see e.g. Pullum & Huddleston 2002: 1058). 48 Unlike in non-restrictive cases, restrictive prenominal modifiers oftentimes carry distinctive stress.

38

The word class ‘adjective’

on whether it serves the – essentially pragmatic (cf. Gunkel & Zifonun 2009) – function of establishing DP-reference or not. If tall is essential in answering the question which house?, it is restrictive; if it is not, the adjective is used nonrestrictively – a contrast discourse-context will usually resolve without further ado (cf. Partee 1995: 319). Therefore, modified proper names are usually interpreted non-restrictively, as only few contexts ask for the restriction of DPreference. Also, adjectives with merely expressive meaning, such as damn or stupid, are typically interpreted non-restrictively or enforce intrepretations along these lines (on restrictiveness see Gunkel & Zifonun 2009; Zifonun et al. 1997; for analyses of prenominal non-restrictivity see Fabricius-Hansen 2009; Umbach 2006). Crucially, restrictive and non-restrictive modification is not tantamount to the opposition of referent- and reference-modification. The example (21a) above, my old friend, is ambiguous between referent- and reference-modification. However, neither interpretation, i.e. old in years (qua human being) or qua friendship, is itself determined as regards the adjective’s contribution and its necessity for establishing DP-reference. Both may well be non-restrictive in contexts that have pre-established the referent of my old friend, while old may as well serve the purpose of identifying one particular friend out of a group of friends (e.g. a young, a middle-aged, and an old one, or one who has been a friend for a short time only in contrast to one who has been a friend for a longer period of time) and thus feature restrictively. While (non-)restrictive modification can be regarded an overarching concept, the following four subchapters provide an overview of, roughly, three adjective typologies. All of these, notional, set-theoretic, and degree-based in nature, will be made use of in chs.2–4.

1.2.2.1 Notional adjective typologies In the tradition of descriptive grammar, adjectives are oftentimes captured along the lines of their concrete semantic content, i.e. the inventory of the word class in a given language is subclassified according to what the adjectives notionally contribute. In Dixon’s (1982; 2004) semantic type system, one such approach for cross-linguistic analyses has already been introduced in section 1.1. For German, most descriptive grammars use a variety of notionally-based typologies and the mere variation amongst them already points to a major drawback of the approach: it is unclear how many semantic categories are necessary for an adjectival stock-check, not to mention which of these are in fact distinct as regards their grammatical contribution and syntactic distribution. In particular, purely notional classifications that are not further enriched with morphosyntactic information appear moot. They may well be informative as regards all possible

Semantics and subclassification of adjectives

39

property concepts a language encodes via adjectives, but it is unclear how finegrained such typologies should be, where to terminate the splitting process, and what is to be gained by the procedure – hyperbolizing, if the process is not stopped at all, we eventually end up with the individual adjectives as such.49 The standard typologies in descriptive grammar therefore blend morphosyntactic properties with notional classes. The Duden (2005: 346–347) grammar, for example, differentiates between four general semantic subclasses of adjectives: ‘qualifying adjectives’, ‘relational adjectives’, ‘quantifying adjectives’, and ‘participles used as adjectives’. Trost (2006) essentially follows this typology, with the exception of the participle class which he merges into the relational and qualifying (which he calls ‘quality’) classes, respectively, and the relational class which he splits up into three distinct classes, namely ‘text-deictic-’ and ‘situational-referential’ as well as ‘adjectives of affiliation’. Engel (1991: 560), in turn, distinguishes five general classes, apparently subsuming Trost’s (2006) text-deictic- and situational-referential to a class of ‘referential adjectives’, while subdividing adjectives of affiliation into ‘adjectives of origin’ and ‘classifying’ ones. In contrast, Eichinger (1992) argues for six general classes that cluster into three superclasses on functional grounds, namely ‘quantifying’ and ‘situational’ (article classifiers), ‘evaluative’ and ‘quality adjectives’ (qualifying adjectives), and ‘descriptive’ and ‘classifying’ ones (noun classifiers). Crucially, most authors agree that class-hopping is a ubiquitous phenomenon, i.e. different senses or polysemes of a certain item allow for multiple categorizations into different subclasses. Restricting the itemization (without any critical discussion) to quality, see (30) and (31), and relational adjectives, see (32), a fairly typical typology for German adjectives along these lines is found in Trost (2006: chs.4/5): (30) RELATIVE QUALITY ADJECTIVES (cf. Trost 2006: 99–107) These are taken as the ‘proper or real property words’, which do not make reference to a second nominal entity or a temporal or locational anchor (as opposed to relational adjectives; see below) but modify a nominal concept ‘directly’. They display the highest degree of prototypicality, i.e. they tend to occur in all canonical syntactic frames, often including adverbial use, and are subject to grammatical comparison (as opposed to absolute 49 For example, Hundsnurscher & Splett (1982) subdivide the German adjective vocabulary into thirteen semantic groups that altogether comprise 70 semantic subclasses. The usefulness – at least in grammatical terms – of classes such as ‘olfactory adjectives’ (e.g. aromatisch ‘aromatic’) or ‘safety adjectives’ (e.g. gefährlich ‘dangerous’; ungefährlich ‘innocuous’), however, is far from evident. For another purely notional typology see Ballmer & Brennenstuhl (1982).

40

The word class ‘adjective’

quality adjectives, see below).50 The property concepts encoded by relatives are not absolute in the sense that said properties depend on a subjective or ascertainable comparison value. Trost’s examples of their intra-class division include 24 subclasses, e.g.: evaluatives:

schön ‘beautiful’; hässlich ‘ugly’; wunderbar ‘wonderful’; verbohrt ‘tenacious’ etc.

dimension adj:

niedrig ‘low’; hoch ‘high’; eng ‘narrow’; weit ‘wide’ etc.

speed adj:

schnell ‘fast’; langsam ‘slow’; flink ‘brisk’; gemächlich ‘leisurely’ etc.

physical state adj.:

kalt ‘cold’; heiß ‘hot’; hell ‘bright’; dunkel ‘dark’ etc.

(31) ABSOLUTE QUALITY ADJECTIVES (cf. Trost 2006: 112–118) Just as relative quality adjectives, absolute ones are taken as ‘real property words’ that directly modify nouns. They are, however, less prototypical than the relative ones in that they do not allow for grammatical comparison because the denoted properties are claimed to be not subjective or dependent on an ascertainable comparison value. Trost’s examples include 13 subclasses, e.g.: color adjectives:

basic color terms such as rot ‘red’; blau ‘blue’ etc.; non-declinable color terms such as oliv ‘olive’; lila ‘lilac’ etc.

shape adjectives:

quadratisch ‘square’; kegelförmig ‘cone shaped’; rund ‘round’ etc.

defectiveness adj.:

physical ones such as blind ‘blind’; stumm ‘mute’ etc.; social ones such as obdachlos ‘homeless’; mittellos ‘without means’; namenlos ‘anonymous’ etc.

alternat. state adj.:

lebendig ‘animate’; tot ‘dead’; anwesend ‘present’; abwesend ‘absent’ etc.

50 Trost (2006: 31–35) defines Steigerung ‘comparison’ as a mere grammatical phenomenon that essentially calls for lexical identity of an adjective in positive, comparative, and superlative forms. He thus sets it apart from Graduierbarkeit ‘gradability’ as a phenomenon that also occurs with absolute quality adjectives in the sense of lexically modifying diminutive or augmentative comparison (cf. ibid.: 51–59).

Semantics and subclassification of adjectives

41

(32) RELATIONAL ADJECTIVES (cf. Trost 2006: 124–134; 140–142) Relational adjectives primarily differ from quality adjectives in that they do not modify a noun directly but always fall back on a second point of reference, which is encoded in the adjective itself. In most cases, this point of reference51 is a second nominal concept – e.g. in adjectives of origin such as italienisch ‘Italian’ or material adjectives such as hölzern ‘wooden’ – but it can also be temporal, locative, or (text-)deictic in nature. Trost’s primary syntactic criterion is their restriction to attributive use, i.e., they neither occur in predicative, adverbial, nor adjective-modifying uses. Reflecting this dual reference frame, the better part of relational adjectives is morphologically complex, i.e. derived, with the preponderance of items having recourse to nominal concepts in German being denominals in the Germanic suffixes –isch, –lich, and –ern and the loan suffixes –iv, –al, –ell, –ar, –är, –an (cf. Motsch 2004; Schlücker 2014). Moreover, they elude grammatical comparison as well as other forms of gradability. Trost identifies 20 subclasses (some of them subject to further subdivision), e.g.: gen. areas of life:

general civilization terms such as väterlich ‘paternal’; mütterlich ‘maternal’; häuslich ‘domestic’; ländlich ‘rural’; bäuerlich ‘peasant’; material adjectives such as metallen ‘metal(ic)’; seiden ‘silk(en)’; kupfern ‘copper(y)’ etc.; adjectives of origin such as belgisch ‘Belgian’; niederländisch ‘Dutch’; amerikanisch ‘American’ etc., religious and cultural adj. such as jüdisch ‘Jewish’; islamisch ‘Islamic’; sprachlich ‘linguistic’; musikalisch ‘musical’ etc.; technical adj. such as technisch ‘technical’; hydraulisch ‘hydraulic’ etc.

referential adj.:

temporal adj. such as gestrig ‘yesterday’s / of yesterday’; morgig ‘tomorrow’s’; sofortig ‘immediate’; local adj. such as hiesig ‘local (here)’; dortig ‘local (there)’; auswärtig ‘external’; text-deictic participles such as erwähnt ‘(above-)mentioned’; genannt ‘named; folgend ‘following’; nachstehend ‘below-mentioned’ etc.

51 A point that tends to remain implicit at best in descriptive grammars is that in many cases this second point of reference is clearly non-referential, as, for example the material concepts encoded in denominal adjectives such as hölzern ‘wooden’, steinern ‘stone’, or golden ‘gold(en)’ when modifying an object denoting noun (cf. e.g. Levi 1978).

42

The word class ‘adjective’

As stated above, there is neither a consensus within the descriptive camp regarding a necessary or appropriate amount of subclasses, nor is their added value from a grammatical perspective self-evident. However, given that the better part of approaches on adjective order restrictions avail themselves of notional classes, it is these and their clustering in grammatically enriched superclasses of the kinds in (30)–(32) that I will also draw upon in ch.3.

1.2.2.2 Set-theoretic and entailment-based adjective typologies Largely cutting through notional typologies, formal semantics since the 1970s has classified adjectives along modificational patterns; a strategy which – in contrast to notional typologies – does not foreground the meaning of the adjectives as such but merely one property of their semantics (cf. Partee 1995: 324). The primary distinctions comprise intersective, subsective, and non-subsective adjectives. These are established on set-theoretic considerations, meaning postulates, and the inference patterns AN-phrases license (cf. e.g. Kamp 1975; Kamp & Partee 1995; Montague 1974; Partee 1995; 2001). Adjectives typically classified as intersective (at least in their primary readings) include: (33) INTERSECTIVE blau ‘blue’; radioaktiv ‘radioactive’; fleischfressend ‘carnivorous’; rund ‘round’; verheiratet ‘married’; männlich ‘male’; voll ‘full’ etc. It is this class to which Heim & Kratzer’s PM in (17) straightforwardly applies, with the general idea behind the classification being set intersection. Assuming that the adjectives in (33) as well as every common noun denote sets of individuals (both of type ), their combination in an AN-syntagm amounts to intersecting the two expressions’ extensions, i.e. two sets of individuals (34). (34)

fleischfressendes Tier ‘carnivorous animal’ 〚fleischfressend〛 = x is carnivorous 〚Tier〛 = x is an animal 〚fleischfressendes Tier〛 =〚fleischfressend〛∩〚Tier〛 = λx [CARNIVOROUS(x) ∧ ANIMAL(x)]

Putting the cart before the horse, the reverse argument is based on semantic entailment as in (35): (35)

Der Löwe ist ein fleischfressendes Tier. ‘The lion is a carnivorous animal.’ ⊨ The lion is carnivorous. ⊨ The lion is an animal.

Semantics and subclassification of adjectives

43

Also, it is argued (cf. e.g. Partee 2001: 274–275) that this procedure holds for the adjectives in (33) irrespective of the nouns they combine with (subject to selectional restrictions, of course). A modifier’s ‘noun-neutrality’ (cf. Vendler 1968: 109) or ‘independence of the modified domain’ (cf. e.g. Frawley 1992: 446) is said to give rise to valid inferences of the kind (36). (36) Der Löwe ist ein fleischfressendes Tier. ‘The lion is a carnivorous animal.’ Der Löwe ist ein Lebewesen. ‘The lion is a creature.’ ⊨ Der Löwe ist ein fleischfressendes Lebewesen. ‘The lion is a carnivorous creature.’ Intersective adjectives in this sense are very closely related (and oftentimes used synonymously) with absolute adjectives and/or objective adjectives from descriptive classifications. Definitions in this regard conflate the class with properties in the narrow sense, i.e. their “extensions are classes of objects” (Eisenberg 2006: 240; my translation) that are independent of the modified expression and they are usually defined (at least in their primary senses) as non-gradable (cf. the discussions in Alexiadou et al. 2007: 313–314; Eisenberg 2006: 239–240; Hetzron 1978; Vendler 1968). Quasi-synonymous terminology for intersective adjectives is found in Bierwisch’s (1989) ‘absolute’ class as well as in so-called ‘categorematic’ expressions (cf. e.g. Frawley 1992). On the basis of the above tests for intersectivity, a second (larger) class of adjectives is commonly derived, namely subsective ones. These typically include items such as: (37) SUBSECTIVE groß ‘big’; geschickt ‘skillful’; klug ‘clever’; erfahren ‘experienced’; treu ‘loyal’; streng ‘strict’ etc. These adjectives in AN-phrases yield different, and partly invalid, results when applied to the analogs of (34)–(36), i.e. they cannot be analyzed in terms of set intersection. For example, the inference pattern in (38) is invalid, as someone who is a clever tennis player and at the same time an engineer, is not necessarily a clever engineer. (38)

Peter ist ein kluger Tennisspieler. Peter ist Ingenieur.

‘Peter is a clever tennis player.’ ‘Peter is an engineer.’

⊭ Peter ist ein kluger Ingenieur.

‘Peter is a clever engineer.’

Moreover, while modification via subsective adjectives permits entailment with regard to the head, it does not necessarily allow for entailment with regard to

44

The word class ‘adjective’

the modifier. Set-theoretically, subsective adjectives “serve to pick out a subset of individuals within the extension of the expression they modify” (McNally to appear: 8). This behavior – captured, in opposition to intersective modifiers, under the label ‘dependence of the modified domain’ (cf. Frawley 446) – is illustrated in (39): (39)

Peter ist ein kluger Tennisspieler. ⊭ Peter ist klug. ⊨ Peter ist Tennisspieler.

While Tennisspieler is a deverbal noun (Ingenieur is not, though), the source of subsectivity as described here is not necessarily bound to underlying events. For example, a good father is not necessarily a good person, a large hut not necessarily (or rather unlikely) a large building, and a wide pond rather not a wide body of water. This behavior is illustrated by (40), the classic textbook example of the elephant Jumbo (cf. e.g. Heim & Kratzer 1998: 68–70): (40)

Jumbo is a small elephant. Jumbo is an animal. ⊭ Jumbo is a small animal.

Using descriprive terminology, the subsective class can roughly be equated with relative and / or subjective adjectives, which are claimed to not denote properties on a par with intersective (absolute) ones. They do not have an “extension in the common sense” (Eisenberg 2006: 240; my translation) but depend on the scale type of the modified element and tend to be gradable (cf. the discussions in Alexiadou et al. 2007: 313–316; Eisenberg 2006: 240–242; Hetzron 1978; Vendler 1968). Further quasi-synonymous terminology includes Bierwisch’s (1989) ‘relative’ class as well as so called ‘syncategorametic’ expressions (cf. e.g. Frawley 1992). While subsective adjectives at least yield a subset of what they modify (just as intersective adjectives do, which can be understood as a subclass of subsective modifiers; see Partee 1995: 324), i.e.〚kluger Tennisspieler〛⊆〚Tennisspieler〛, non-subsective adjectives are usually defined as items that do not even allow for entailments of the modified element. Thus, they do not (necessarily) yield subsets of the sets denoted by this expression (cf. e.g. Kamp 1975; Parsons 1970; Partee 2001). Typical non-subsective adjectives include items such as:

Semantics and subclassification of adjectives

45

(41) NON - SUBSECTIVE angeblich ‘supposed’; mutmaßlich ‘alleged’; falsch ‘fake’; früher ‘former’; möglich ‘possible’; scheinbar ‘ostensible’ etc. The non-subsective class exhibits yet again a different behavior in entailment and inference patterns, which is illustrated in (42): (42)

Peter ist ein mutmaßlicher Mörder. ‘Peter is an alleged murderer.’ ⊭ *Peter ist mutmaßlich. ⊭ Peter ist ein Mörder.

Thus, from Peter is an alleged murderer. we cannot infer that Peter is a murderer, i.e. the AN-phrase does not establish a subset of the set denoted by the modified expression. Moreover, in predicative use, it is not only nonsensical to claim that Peter is alleged but also ungrammatical. Being mostly banned from predicative use is a noticeable property of this class (see 1.2.1.1. above). Non-subsective adjectives are also often called intensional and / or modal modifiers, as they cannot be applied to the extension of the modified elements (cf. e.g. Kamp 1975; Zifonun et al. 1997).52

1.2.2.3 Problems of set-theoretic adjective typologies The general usefulness of the entailment-based typology introduced in the preceding section is disputable, however, and at least four caveats are to be issued in this regard: i) subclass size, ii) the heterogeneity of the subsective class, iii) the alleged nature of the intersective class, and iv) the status of relational adjectives. I will go through each of these successively, with considerably more weight being placed on ii)-iv). This discussion will also illustrate two general (and opposed) tendencies across a variety of publications to unify the different classes – in particular the sub- and intersective ones – to either furnish them with compositional modificational semantics along the predicate modification rule or to deny set-intersection as a viable composition rule even for simple intersective adjectives.

52 Non-applicability to the extension of the modified expression’s extension is sometimes also assessed for the subsective class. Thus, e.g. Zifonun et al. (1997) subdivide adjectives into two large classes – intensional and extensional ones – with subsective and non-intersective ones being intensional and only intersective ones being extensional (cf. ibid.: 1997–2005).

46

The word class ‘adjective’

I ) SUBCLASS SIZE

First, the class of non-subsective adjectives in English and German is very small – it includes only a handful of items other than the ones in (41) – and it is therefore arguably unjustified to juxtapose it to the far larger classes of subsective and intersective adjectives, which both include thousands of items (the subsective class being far larger than the intersective one, in turn). Second, the sources for non-subsectivity are varied, so that even this small set of items is heterogeneous. Adjectives such as false, fake, or fictitious are privative in the sense that they entail the negation of the nominal property (cf. Partee 2001). Other exemplars, like possible, ostensible, or supposed, rather relate to questions of modality and/or the attitudinal or evaluative stance of the speaker, while former or future can only be analyzed with recourse to the relation between utterance and topic time (for the various sources of non-subsectivity see e.g. Boleda 2006: 35–36; Coppock 2009: ch.5; Morcizky in prep.: 22–26).

II ) THE HETEROGENEITY OF THE SUBSECTIVE CLASS

A further objection to the approach concerns the heterogeneity of subsective modification. For example, dimension adjectives (cf. Bierwisch 1989) such as groß ‘big’, weit ‘wide’, or dünn ‘thin’ or age adjectives like alt ‘old’, neu ‘new’, jung ‘young’ lead to invalid inference patterns such as (43). However, these expressions are inherently vague and context-sensitive, i.e. there is no such thing as width or tallness without a reference magnitude with which an entity and the property in question can be contrasted (cf. Kamp 1975; Partee 1995). Thus, even if we keep the adjective’s sense constant, i.e. for example groß as ‘tall’ not ‘great’, these adjectives can only be interpreted with recourse to the context provided linguistically and/or extra-linguistically (and arguably by the modified noun in the vast majority of cases; see Morzycki in prep: 20–22). (43)

Peter ist ein großer Jockey. Peter ist ein Mann.

‘Peter is a tall jockey.’ ‘Peter is a man.’

⊭ Peter ist ein großer Mann.

‘Peter is a tall man.’

Given that it seems to be the head noun that suggests itself as the immediate point of reference, “the reason for the inference failure is that the adjective is differently interpreted in the premise and in the conclusion” (Schäfer 2013: 27), i.e. once in relation to the rough standard height of jockeys and once to the one of (grown-up) men. Following Bierwisch (1989), the comparison class for a dimension adjective will furthermore be critically influenced by its relatum in a

Semantics and subclassification of adjectives

47

given use and the question whether the relatum’s nominal concept provides an intrinsic norm for the relevant dimension – which can be argued to hold for groß in the premise ( Jockey) as well as the conclusion (Mann) in (43) (cf. Bierwisch 1989: 91–95; for standards of comparison and the positive as well graded use of adjectives see Bierwisch 1989; Bolinger 1972; Kennedy 2007; for contextual factors other than the head noun see Kennedy 2007; Partee 1995).53 Assuming that the comparison standards for dimension and age adjectives are fairly uncontroversial in most cases,54 these are oftentimes analyzed as intersective rather than subsective. Kamp (1975), for example, proposes an intersective analysis for these cases but furnishes the respective adjective with a context-sensitive variable C that adjusts to the comparison standard in a given context (cf. also Heim & Kratzer 1998: 70–71; see Higginbotham 1985: 563–565 for an intersective analysis of dimension adjectives via what he calls θ-identification of the adjective and the modified noun). An intersective analysis for a typical dimension adjective such as tall thus includes a standard of comparison, viz. the comparison class to be specified contextually (the class of〚men〛serves as such in our example), which is standardly abbreviated as C as in (44): (44)

a.

tall man

b.

λx [TALL(x, Cmen) ∧ MAN(x)]

For English, a difference along these lines between truly subsective and seemingly subsective adjectives, i.e. intersective but context-dependent ones, is provided by Siegel (1980). She avails herself of two test paraphrases (which go back to Vendler 1968): as-a-phrases and for-a-phrases (cf. ibid.: 107–115), the former indicating subsectivity as established above, the latter intersectivity in relation to a comparison class:

53 Dimension and relative age adjectives also seem to cluster together with respect to the scales on which they can be mapped – they tend to share their scales with their antonyms and the scales are unbounded and display an indeterminate middle for which neither antonym is applicable, i.e. they are not logical contradictories (cf. Kennedy 2007; Toledo & Sassoon 2011). Furthermore, in neutral contexts, in which a value on a scale is asked for, the positively polarized adjective is used: How tall (?short) are you?; My son is 3 years old (?young) now. (cf. Bierwisch 1989). 54 That is, at least roughly we can assume that speakers from the same cultural background will have similar judgments concerning, e.g., the standard height of grown up Central European men, the somewhat lesser height of professional jockeys, or the standard width of a German three lane highway.

The word class ‘adjective’

48 (45)

a.

John is a tall basketball player. → He is tall for a basketball player. → *He is tall as a basketball player.

b.

John is a poor basketball player. → ?He is poor for a basketball player. → He is poor as a basketball player.55

Obviously, the for-a-paraphrase for poor basketball player differs in markedness from the as-a-paraphrase for tall basketball player. While the latter seems hardly grammatical, the former merely differs semantically. Many evaluative adjectives, such as good, bad, clever, poor, or stupid, thus appear ambiguous between a for-a- and an as-a-reading – this is where Partee (1995: 331) draws the line between truly subsective and context-dependent intersective modification patterns that can be understood as one set-theoretic distillate of Bolinger’s (1967) referencereferent distinction. Siegel (1980), in turn, assumes a doublet theory. In particular on the basis of long and short adjectival forms in (some) Slavic languages,56 she captures the reading differences as an instance of polysemy in the lexicon, where she argues for (at least) two entries for many adjectives, one being of the -kind and the other of the more complex kind ,57 mapping intensions to intensions (or properties to properties) in the Montagovian sense (cf. Montague 1974).58 A further distinction concerns the nature of the comparison class for evaluative adjectives, which are oftentimes said to differ from the standard scales assumed for dimension or age adjectives. Bierwisch (1989: 87–89) illustrates that the latter are strictly antonym-based in the sense that either antonym is mapped on a scale of the same dimension, i.e., the individual described by the 55 An equivalent paraphrase test for German, though a somewhat clumsy one, can be established with für-ein- and als-phrases: i) großer Basketballer ‘tall basketball player’ → groß für einen Basketballer /*groß als Basketballer ii) schlechter Basketballer ‘bad basketball player’ → schlecht als Basketballer / */?schlecht für einen Basketballer 56 Siegel illustrates the difference wrt. Russian. Her argument is crucially informed by Russian adjectives that have long and short forms, with the former presumably used as an intersective modifier and the latter as a subsective one. For similar contrasts in Serbo-Croatian, see Aljović (2010). 57 Siegel formalizes them as CN/CN, i.e. as mapping common nouns to common nouns, but nothing seems to hinge on this choice of terminology. 58 Montague (1974) assumes all attributive adjectives to be of kind , i.e. they all denote properties of properties.

Semantics and subclassification of adjectives

49

adjective will inevitably be assigned a value on this scale. He captures this difference via a further subclassification: strict antonymy-based items mapping both antonyms on the same dimension are ‘transparent’, while antonyms possibly mapped on different scales are ‘intransparent’ (for scale-/degree-based typologies in general, see 1.2.2.4.). In (46), given the antonym pairs groß-klein ‘tall-short’ / dick-dünn ‘thick-thin’, encoding the dimensions height / thickness, and fleißig-faul ‘industrious-lazy’ / schön-hässlich ‘beautiful-ugly’, encoding industriousness / beauty, only the former two pairs will assign a degree on the same dimensional scale for either antonym (examples partly adopted from Bierwisch 1989: 88): (46)

TRANSPARENT

a.

Hans ist klein/groß. ‘Hans is short/tall.’ → Hans has a degree of height

b.

Das Buch ist dick/dünn. ‘The book is thick/thin.’ → the book has a degree of thickness

INTRANSPARENT

c.

Hans ist faul. ‘Hans is lazy.’ → does not mean that Hans has a degree of industriousness

d.

Hans ist hässlich. ‘Hans is ugly.’ → does not mean that Hans has a degree of beauty

Thus, it is unclear, whether evaluative antonym pairs are mapped on the same dimension or make use of different kinds of scales – for example, a scale encoding beauty for items such as beautiful and one encoding ugliness for ones like ugly (or at least different parts of the same dimension being triggered depending on the antonym). For Bierwisch, a further prediction follows from the transparent-intransparent opposition popping up in dimension and evaluative adjectives, respectively: For someone to count as tall, other individuals had to be taken into account as the comparison class, while for evaluating intransparent industrious, no external comparison class was necessary (cf. ibid.). In the sense of Szabó (2001), evaluatives can therefore be argued to call for an additional attitudinal dimension, i.e. interpreting evaluatives “requires that context provide an individual or group of individuals from whose perspective the evaluation is made” (Szabó 2001: 136; see also Rijkhoff 2010: 103–105 for what he calls attitudinal modification). Just as the head noun suggests itself as the point of reference for dimension and age adjectives outside strong contexts indicating

50

The word class ‘adjective’

otherwise, it is the speaker for evaluative or subjective comment adjectives (cf. also Seiler 1978: 311).59 In this context, Frawley (1992: 459–461) challenges the neat dichotomy of intersective and subsective modification (or categorematicity and syncategorematicity in his parlance), suggesting a sort of continuum in its stead: True value expressions such as good, bad, or wonderful would thus typically be located at the subsective (syncategorematic) pole, dimension and human propensity60 items centrally within the continuum, and, for example, shape and color adjectives typically at the intersective (categorematic) end. The idea of a gradual axis of intersectivity is illustrated in (47): (47)

CONTINUUM OF ‘ TYPICAL ’ INTERSECTIVITY/OBJECTIVITY

(cf. Frawley 1992: §10.2) typic. subsective/relative – intermediate – typic. intersective/absolute ~subjective/speaker depend. – interm. – objective/speaker independ. e.g. (true) evaluatives – human propensity – dimension – shape – color Be that as it may, the subsectivity of adjectives in expressions such as (45b), e.g. poor basketball player in the as-a-reading, has also been called into question. Obviously, this reading is primarily evoked by the deverbal nature of the noun basketball player and the implicit modification of John’s basketball playing. Making use of Davidsonian arguments for events (cf. Davidson 1967; for an overview of event semantics see Maienborn 2011), Larson (1995; 1998) argues against Siegel’s assumption of adjectival doublets in the lexicon and for an intersective analysis of adjectives that modify events. Crucially, by sourcing out the ambiguity from the lexical entries for adjectives, Larson (1998) assumes a richer lexical structure of nouns that allows adjectives to apply to different arguments (for similar treatments see e.g. Pustojevsky 1995; Mendes & Amaro 2009). A meanwhile timehonored example he discusses is (48) with two possible interpretations:

59 Eisenberg (2006: 242) defines this context-bound interpretation as the fulfillment of a certain norm provided by the adjective itself. While this may apply to adjectives such as healthy or sick (whose clustering in the evaluative class is not self-evident), it seems problematic for core evaluatives like good, nice, or beautiful which are arguably more subjective. 60 Cf. Dixon (1982) for human propensity adjectives, which are described as a distinct class of what are essentially evaluatives of human behavior and human’s individual characteristics.

Semantics and subclassification of adjectives

(48)

51

Olga is a beautiful dancer. a. → Olga is beautiful as a dancer. (sub-/non-intersective/reference-modifying)61 b.

→ Olga is beautiful and she is a dancer. (intersective/referent-modifying)

While for Siegel (1980) the ambiguity is down to the adjective’s contribution, either as an - or an -predicate, Larson (1995; 1998; 1999) locates it in the nominal structure that provides at least two arguments: either as an argument for the individual to which an adjectival predicate may apply (48b) or as an argument for the nominal’s inherent event (48a). The distinction is thus turned into one between a core adnominal in the former and an essentially adverbial reading in the latter – certain adjectives are then lexically polymorphic, rather than stored multiple times in the mental lexicon, in that they can denote properties of either individuals or events (see also Schäfer 2013). In his formalization (adopted here as (49)), Larson (1998: 152–153) introduces an event quantifier Q that binds the event argument e, while C realizes a comparison class similar to the one introduced in (44) above for dimension adjectives. (49)

a.

Qe[DANCING(e, olga) . . . BEAUTIFUL(olga,C)] → Olga is beautiful

b.

Qe[DANCING(e, olga) . . . BEAUTIFUL(e,C)] → dancing is beautiful

Larson analogously uses this kind of reasoning to capture reading differences for ambiguous examples like my old friend in (21a), providing the same formalization for the two possible readings as shown in (50): (50)

Peter is an old friend. a. Qe[FRIENDSHIP(e, peter) . . . OLD(peter,C)] → Peter is old b.

Qe[FRIENDSHIP(e, peter) . . . OLD(e,C)] → friendship has lasted for a long time

61 Larson (1998) calls the first reading non-intersective, the second intersective. Subsectivity is an even more problematic category for deverbal nouns as the for-a-paraphrase shows: Olga is beautiful for a dancer seems to suggest that dancers are the comparison class and beautiful dancers, in this reading, a subset of the set of dancers. This, however, is not the event-modifying reading Larson has in mind.

52

The word class ‘adjective’

The obvious problem with such a transfer lies in the different nature of the nouns friend and dancer. While the latter is a deverbal for which assuming an event argument (usually bound by a generic operator; cf. Krifka et al. 1995) appears plausible, the relation between monomorphemic friend and an underlying friendship event is less self-evident and therefore called into question by a variety of authors (cf. e.g. Morzycki in prep.: 40).62

III ) ARE INTERSECTIVES REALLY FREE OF A COMPARISON CLASS ? A different line of criticism aimed at entailment-based approaches concerns the core class of intersective adjectives itself. Recall Partee’s (1995) and Vendler’s (1968) claims that these expressions’ meaning contribution holds irrespective of the nouns they combine with, viz. their noun-neutrality. However, in particular for color (red, green etc.) and shape (round, straight etc.) terms, classified as intersective in this section, it seems disputable that their mode of modification is completely independent of the modified expression. For example, Bouchard (2002: 62–63) argues that all quality adjectives are calibrated in context, irrespective of notional or set-theoretic class. Similarly, Lahav (1989) captures the problem under the notion of ‘applicability conditions’:

»[The] conditions that have to be satisfied by any object under any (correctly ascribed) noun in order for the adjective to correctly apply to that object; for example, the conditions under which an object is describable by ‘red N,’ for any noun N. After all, it is obvious that if two adjectives differ in their applicability conditions, then they also differ in their meaning (though perhaps not vice versa). Thus, instead of talking of ‘a uniform semantic contribution,’ we can interpret the principle broadly as requiring at least that every adjective has uniform applicability conditions in all the normal compound expressions in which it appears (excluding, of course, special cases). Intuitively speaking, the idea is that the conditions that a table has to meet in order to be describable by ‘red table’ should be the same conditions that a house or a book has to meet in order to be describable by ‘red house’ or ‘red book.’« (Lahav 1989: 262)

At least by definition, this requirement is fulfilled by intersective adjectives. Also, it appears to hold true for some of the expressions above, such as verheiratet ‘married’, fleischfressend ‘carnivorous’, or radioaktiv ‘radioactive’, which are, however, fairly restricted regarding the possible nouns they usually modify. In contrast, color and shape adjectives are more promiscuous in this respect and 62 See also Szabó’s (2001: 133–135) and Schäfer’s (to appear) analyses, in which the authors assume a role argument R instead of an event argument to account for similar structures. These approaches may well be able to extend Larson’s reasoning to examples of modified non-deverbals such as friend or colleague.

Semantics and subclassification of adjectives

53

Lahav (1989) as well as Szabó (2001) dispute the validity of fully compositional analyses via simple predicate conjunction for such expressions. Both authors use color adjectives to argue that seemingly intersective adjectives are as contextdependent as, for example, evaluative and dimension adjectives in that they have a strong tendency to modify via what may be called ‘totum pro parte fashion’ – the question then being which part a color term (or shape adjective) applies to in actuality when the surface expression modifies the whole. Consider Lahav’s (1989: 264) examples in (51) for red in combination with a variety of modified expressions and the respective applicability conditions, in particular with respect to the parts of the modified expression that usually need to be red for the adjective “to correctly apply to that object”: (51)

red X

(meronymical) applicability conditions

bird

→ large parts of the surface of the body, not the beak, legs, eyes, inner organs; red should be the bird’s natural color

kitchen table

→ upper surface, not necessarily the legs or bottom surface; can be painted red, does not have to be its natural color

apple

→ only outside, not inside

water melon

→ only inside, not outside

book

→ only cover, not necessarily the pages

newspaper

→ pages have to be red

house

→ most of the walls, not necessarily the roof, windows

car

→ external surface including roof, not bumpers, wheels

While Lahav’s examples are based on intuitions, his observations are certainly not inaccurate. At least for color terms it is problematic to merely understand them as predicates that apply to individuals without allowing for clearly context-dependent specifications. Thus, inference patterns for color adjectives may lead to invalid results in those cases in which the adjective’s applicability conditions differ in the premise and the conclusion. In other words, in these cases intersective adjectives appear to be beset with the same logical problem that Schäfer (2013) assesses for typical subsective cases such as the dimension adjective tall in (43) above. Following Lahav’s meronymical applicability conditions in (51), we find the problem illustrated for the apparently heterogeneous conditions in the realm of different fruits: being the hyperonym of apple as well as water melon in a botanical taxonomy, fruit should give rise to the typical inference pattern for intersective adjective as in (36). Yet, this reasoning is borne

The word class ‘adjective’

54

out for the conflation of apple and fruit in (52a) only, while it seems awkward for water melon and fruit in (52b).63 (52)

a.

b.

Dies ist ein roter Apfel. Dies ist eine Frucht.

‘This is a red apple.’ ‘This is a fruit.’

⊨ Dies ist eine rote Frucht.

‘This is a red fruit.’

Dies ist eine rote Wassermelone. Dies ist eine Frucht.

‘This is a red watermelon.’ ‘This is a fruit.’

⊭ Dies ist eine rote Frucht.

‘This is a red fruit.’

Crucially, the argument just presented appears transferable to other putatively intersective modifiers such as shape adjectives. Thus, for example, in the realm of furniture, we encounter similar problems for a hyperonym Möbelstück ‘piece of furniture’, two of its hyponyms Regal ‘shelf’ and Tisch ‘table’, and a shape adjective quadratisch ‘square’. A square table suggests different meronymical applicability conditions (i.e. the table board has to be square) than a square shelf (typically its open front has to be square), while intuitions may differ to quite some degree as regards the part it takes to be square for some piece of furniture not further specified by some basic level term (see for example Sproat & Shih 1988: 470–471 for an argument to the contrary). It is thus at issue how different even the prime examples of intersective adjectives actually are regarding context-dependency, or noun-depency, from subsective ones (illustrated in (53); adapted from Kennedy 2012: 12), in which slow appears to contribute its meaning to different parts of the respective nouns’ lexical structures (and, moreover, in different ways): (53)

occurrences of slow with different Ns and its meaning contribution a. Tom Brady is a slow quarterback. → slow runner/passer b. Lake Shore Drive is a slow road during rush hour. → traffic moves slowly c. Venus in Furs is a slow song. → slow tempo d. Remembrance of Things Past is a slow book. → time-consuming read

63 An answer to the question why apple and fruit in this case appear to exhibit similar applicability conditions, while water melon and fruit do not, is not straightforward. Most likely, the reason can be found by dint of prototype theoretical considerations, which have shown apples to be understood as the cognitively most prototypical members among fruits and water melons as marginal ones (cf. e.g. Geeraerts 2010: 189–191; Rosch 1973; 1978).

Semantics and subclassification of adjectives

55

Furthermore, returning to color terms, it is not even clear that different instances of red (or other color adjectives) merely apply to different inherent parts of the entities denoted by the nouns they modify or whether they have the ‘same’ meaning at all. A typical red face certainly differs in ‘redness’ from the typical red car, and both arguably differ from the prototypical idea of ‘redness’ of a red sun (for similar objections against a predicate conjunction approach to shape adjectives see Szabó 2001). This latter distinction has been captured by Kennedy & McNally (2010) via two different dimensions modified by color terms: color quantity and color quality; the former applying to the part-question, the latter to actual differences in hue and trueness of color.64 While Lahav (1989) is skeptical of compositional approaches to adjectives in general and, in passing, suggests an analogical account, Szabó (2001) proposes a treatment of the problematic cases just sketched along the lines of Larson’s (1995; 1998) analysis laid out above. At least for color terms, he introduces another variable P besides C, which introduces the comparison class,65 to account for a “contextually specifiable [. . .] part” (Szabó 2001: 137–138; italics in the original), i.e. for the concrete part of an object that is qualified by an adjectival concept. Thus, further doubt is cast on the prima facie elegant division of the adjectival class into intersective, subsective, and non-subsective predicates, with several authors suggesting recourse to a more pronounced lexical semantics of nouns.

IV ) THE STATUS OF RELATIONAL ADJECTIVES

A final possible caveat against the general insights to be drawn from the intersective vs subsective distinction concerns the overlap with the descriptive classes established in 1.2.2.1. Many of the relative quality class’s items in (30) can be assigned straightforwardly to the subsective and many of the absolute quality adjectives in (31) to the intersective kind (disregarding the just discussed problems that come along with their putatively independent extension). Thus, restricting the discussion to object-denoting, i.e., non-eventive nouns, relative quality expressions usually follow the (partly) invalid inference and entailment patterns in (38)–(40), a feature that derives from their discussed context-dependency. Likewise, abstracting away from the problematic notion of 64 In fact, Kennedy & McNally (2010) make a more basic distinction between color terms used as either classifying (non-gradable) or quality adjectives (gradable on absolute scales; see 1.2.2.4.) – the difference between quality and quantity is considered to only apply to the latter occurrence. 65 Unlike Kennedy & McNally (2010), who argue in favor of analyzing color terms as absolute – though gradable – modifiers, Szabó understands them as vague and scalar expressions and therefore introduces C roughly on a par with analyses for e.g. dimension adjectives; see also Kamp (1975) and Zifonun et al. (1997: 2001–2004).

56

The word class ‘adjective’

context-independency, the absolute quality adjectives felicitously feature in such test environments, i.e. (34)–(36). However, the picture is more obscure for the relational class (32). Neglecting secondary senses,66 many relational adjectives in principle behave like subsective modifiers along the entailment-based typology above: (54)

Hans ist technischer Assistent. Hans ist Gärtner.

‘John is a technical assistant.’ ‘John is a gardener.’

⊭ Hans ist technischer Gärtner.

‘John is a technical gardener.’67

However, in AN-syntagms with relational adjectives the modifier serves a classifying function. They pick out subkinds of the kind denoted by the head noun and, being denominal themselves, see (32) above, function very similarly to modifiers in NN-compounds. In this sense, they are not object-level modifying, the primary functional contribution of quality adjectives, but kind-level modifying or inherently classifying (cf. e.g. Arsenijević et al. 2014; Boleda & McNally 2004; Gunkel & Zifonun 2009; Levi 1978; Schlücker & Hüning 2009; Schlücker 2014). Thus, Schlücker (2014: ch.4.3.), working in a Parallel Architecture model (see e.g. Jackendoff 2002), assigns the better part of German AN-phrases with relational adjectives functional as well as semantic equivalence to NN-compounds, while keeping them apart structurally as syntactic and lexical expressions, respectively. For English, Levi (1978) also regards the two constructions as subkinds of what she calls ‘complex nominals’, deriving from equivalent base structures and essentially capable of encoding the same large set of semantic relations between modifier and head (cf. ibid.: 76–77).68 Besides not admitting predicative use (see (32) above), relational adjectives consequently exhibit a variety of further exceptional characteristics that set them apart from quality adjectives and can mostly be ascribed to their classifying nature (for an overview, see, e.g., Schlücker 2014: ch.4.3.). For example, they license different question contexts (roughly, What kind of an assistant is he? 66 Relational adjectives are prone to develop quality counterparts; e.g. himmlisch as in ein himmlischer Eintopf ‘a heavenly (~brilliant) stew’ or französisch as in seine sehr französische Attitüde ‘his very French attitude’. These tend to go hand in hand with regular predicative use. 67 Obviously, technischer Assistent is a lexicalized phrase and relational adjectives seem to have a slightly different, more restricted role in German than in English or Romance languages (in particular as the former is very affine to compounding). For lexical integrity, see 4.1.2. For relational adjectives in German, in particular those on –isch, from a descriptive perspective, see Eichinger (1982) and Schäublin (1972). 68 With regard to AN-constructions, the syntax-morphology divide is notoriously more difficult to pin down for English than for German; see, among many others, Giegerich (2009).

Semantics and subclassification of adjectives

57

A technical one. vs How is the assistant? *Technical) and universally do not allow for un-prefixation (but at times take non-/nicht-prefixes ‘non-‘ in German) or gradation/comparison. Moreover, they tend to appear adjacent to the modified noun (i.e. not interrupted by quality adjectives; a tall technical assistant vs *a technical tall assistant), and are odd when coordinated with quality adjectives (?/*a tall and technical assistant). In particular the last two characteristics will be taken up again in chs.3/4. For relational adjectives, then, a further reformulation of putatively subsective modification patterns, similar to Larson’s (1998) for deverbal nouns, can be found in McNally & Boleda (2004). Based primarily on Catalan data (yet easily extendable to German and English), McNally & Boleda (2004) propose a Larsonian treatment of relational adjectives, i.e. an intersective analysis that makes use of an additional argument provided by the noun. Here, however, the adjective does not apply to the noun’s event argument but modifies a kind argument – the traditional relational adjective thus denotes a property of kinds, not of individuals, and composes with a CN’s kind- and object-level arguments via Carlson’s (1980) realization relation R. Following Krifka et al.’s (1995) notation of kind arguments in nouns, the AN-cluster arquitecte tècnic ‘technical architect’ translates to McNally & Boleda’s (2004: 188–189) logical form in (55):69 (55) λxk λyo[R(yo,xk) ∧ ARCHITECT(xk) ∧ TECHNICAL(xk)](kj) = λyo[R(yo,kj) ∧ ARCHITECT(kj) ∧ TECHNICAL(kj)] Besides their argument that relational adjectives are thus adjectives proper and not ‘nouns in disguise’, the authors use the approach to account for a variety of data, in particular for the severely restricted, but occasionally possible, predicative use of such adjectives (cf. ibid. and Boleda 2006 for details). In similar fashion, Arsenijević et al. (2014) treat a subclass of relational adjectives, i.e. adjectives of origin or ethnic adjectives, as introducing an ORIGIN relation modifying the (object70) noun’s implicit kind argument. These approaches may well be on the right track given relational adjectives’ deviating behavior. Applying the entailment-based typology to this class, results are more complex. For example, ethnic adjectives as in (56) and material 69 Where the subscripts k and o stand for kind- and object-level entities, respectively, and R is Carlson’s (1980: 69ff.) realization relation between two levels; see also 2.1.2.1. 70 The qualification is important, as event nouns modified by ethnic adjectives are often analyzed under the heading of thematic use (and set apart from classificatory use) and the noun underlying the denominal ethnic adjective as an argument of the NP-head. Thus, French agreement is paraphrased roughly as agreement by France; see e.g. Levi (1978). Arsenijević et al. (2014) argue for a unification of the thematic and classificatory use, though.

The word class ‘adjective’

58

adjectives, see (57),71 appear to cluster with the intersective class as regards inference patterns (keeping constant their sense as ‘originates-from’ and ‘madeof’, respectively): (56)

ETHNIC ADJECTIVES

a.

Pecorino ist ein italienischer Käse. Pecorino ist ein Milchprodukt.

‘Pecorino is an Italian cheese.’ ‘Pecorino is a dairy product.’

⊨ Pecorino ist ein italienisches Milchprodukt. ‘Pecorino is an Italian dairy product.’ b.

(57)

Cohen ist ein kanadischer Musiker. Cohen ist Jude.

‘C. is a Canadian musician.’ ‘C. is a Jew.’

⊨ Cohen ist kanadischer Jude.

‘C. is a Canadian Jew.’

MATERIAL ADJECTIVES

a.

Dort ist eine hölzerne Brücke. ‘There is a wooden bridge.’ Eine Brücke ist ein Bauwerk. ‘A bridge is an architectural construction.’ ⊨ Dort ist ein hölzernes Bauwerk. ‘There is a wooden architectural construction.’

b.

Das ist eine steinerne Statue. Statuen sind Kunstwerke.

‘This is a stone statue.’ ‘Statues are works of art.’

⊨ Das ist ein steinernes Kunstwerk.

‘This is a stone work of art.’

However, there is a slight difference for these two subclasses (ethnic and material adjectives) between German and English examples. Authors working on English oftentimes include ethnic adjectives in their lists of typical intersectives due to their inference patterns – which can be read off from the translations in (56) and (57) – as well as the entailments they license. For example, Morzycki 71 I will disregard the potentially privative character of material adjectives in combinations with certain nouns here and thus neglect the question of which features are necessary and/or incompatible for an individual to be in the extension of a certain lexical expression. A classic question along these lines arises, for example, if we substitute Brücke and Bauwerk in (57a) with Löwe ‘lion’ and Tier ‘animal’. The inference pattern may well be still valid, but crucially hinges on one’s commitment to the entailment question. Are wooden lions (or stone/rubber/ plastic lions) lions and are fake guns guns? For an analysis of modificational type mismatch pairs along the lines of a ‘loose talk’ theory, in particular for material adjectives, see Asher (2011: ch.9); for an analysis exploiting the notion of idiomaticity see Pitt & Katz (2000).

Semantics and subclassification of adjectives

59

(in prep.: 14) provides example (58) as one of the presumably clear-cut and unproblematic intersective cases, i.e. an ethnic adjective in its ‘originates-from’reading: (58)

Floyd is a Canadian surgeon. ⊨ Floyd is Canadian. ⊨ Floyd is a surgeon.

Thus, it seems that in English ethnic adjectives can be predicates of regular individuals (cf. Arsenijević et al. 2014: 24). Transferred to German, the entailments appear intuitively valid – i.e. they are apparently not on a par with examples such as skillful surgeon that can be ambiguous between the as-a-reading (‘qua surgeon’) and the general reading (‘skillful in general’). However, while not outright banned, the DP_is_Adj-entailments are clearly marked or even ungrammatical, a pattern that appears quite systematic for ethnic adjectives (59) in particular,72 but also for material adjectives (60) in post-copula position and is typical for relational adjectives like elektrisch in elektrische Spannung in (19a). While being systematic, the degree of markedness seems to differ across the examples:73 (59)

a.

Floyd ist ein kanadischer Chirurg. ‘Floyd is a Canadian surgeon.’ ⊨ *Floyd ist kanadisch. ‘Floyd is Canadian.’ ⊨ Floyd ist Chirurg. ‘Floyd is a surgeon.’

b.

*Chomsky ist amerikanisch.

‘Chomsky is American.’

c.

*Das Auto ist französisch.

‘The car is French.’

d.

(*Der) ?Renault ist französisch.

‘(The) Renault is French.’

e.

(*Der) ?BMW ist deutsch.

‘(The) BMW is German.’

f.

?Die

‘The chocolates are Belgian.’

Pralinen sind belgisch.

72 For some reason, deutsch ‘German’ works better than any other ethnic adjective in predicative use with a clear-cut individual, i.e. Peter ist deutsch. ‘Peter is German.’ is better than Peter ist amerikanisch/französisch/belgisch/albanisch etc. ‘Peter is American/French/Belgian/ Albanian etc.’. Note that it is also the only ethnic adjective that is not suffixed with –isch. 73 The differences in grammaticality or markedness may be down to the question of how wellestablished a certain subkind is – in contrast to proper names or simple individuals, the make of a car or certain chocolates may well be subject to classification along national lines (cf. McNally & Boleda 2004: 191–192 for arguments). A general ‘problem’ for material adjectives in German concerns the language’s affinity to compounding (cf. e.g. Motsch 2004; Schlücker 2012) – being preferentially encoded lexically as NN-compounds, however, may well be taken as an indicator for subkind readings.

The word class ‘adjective’

60

(60) a. Eine Jochbrücke ist eine hölzerne Brücke. ‘A pile bridge is a wooden bridge.’ ? ‘A pile bridge is wooden.’ ⊨ Eine Jochbrücke ist hölzern. ⊨ Eine Jochbrücke ist eine Brücke. ‘A pile bridge is a bridge.’ b.

?Das

Haus ist gläsern.

‘The house is (made of) glass.’

c.

?Das

Tor ist eisern.

‘The gate is (made of) iron.’

d.

?Der

Gürtel ist ledern.

‘The belt is (made of) leather.’

For other, less disputedly, relational adjectives, for example technical (61a) or civilizational (61b) ones, inference patterns clearly yield results different from intersective quality adjectives. (61)

a.

Er bedient einen hydraulischen Bagger. ‘He operates a hydraulic excavator.’ Ein Bagger ist eine Art Fahrzeug. ‘An excavator is a kind of motorcar.’ ⊭ Er bedient ein hydraulisches Fahrzeug. ‘He operates a hydraulic motorcar.’

b.

Eine Moschee ist ein islamisches Gotteshaus. ‘A mosque is an islamic house of prayer.’ Eine Moschee ist ein Gebäude. ‘A mosque is a building.’ ⊭ ?Eine Moschee ist ein islamisches Gebäude. ‘A mosque is an islamic building.’

While hydraulisches Fahrzeug is not ungrammatical (and will fairly certainly be interpreted as a hydraulically driven machine), it is difficult to assign a clear interpretation to islamisches Gebäude (except for an underspecified modifierhead relation as is typical of compounds). However, the now familiar problem remains: the adjectives are interpreted differently in premise and conclusion. A hydraulic excavator is usually not hydraulically driven, but an excavator whose bucket is powered hydraulically. While the inference failures for classic subsective adjectives as in (38)–(40) are down to different comparison classes, taking recourse to subkind-readings appears to offer a solution for the behavior in the above examples in the sense of Arsenijević et al. (2014) or McNally & Boleda (2004).

Semantics and subclassification of adjectives

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SUMMARY

In summary, while fairly straightforward on the surface, several complications arise with a set-theoretic typology of adjectives along the lines of inter-, sub-, and non-subsectivity. While I am largely neglecting non-subsective modification, the respective subclass sizes have been shown to be very unevenly distributed. Two general, opposing trends have been shown to be at work: First, a strong tendency among formal theories to unify the classes by treating as many subclasses as possible in intersective fashion via additional arguments of various sorts; comparison classes, event arguments, part arguments, and kind arguments. In contrast, the adequacy of intersective analyses for even presumably clear-cut cases of intersective modifiers, such as color or shape terms, is at the same time called into question.

1.2.2.4 Degree-based typologies of gradable adjectives The last classification system to be reviewed is by definition applicable to a subset of adjectives only, namely gradable ones. Degree-based systems do not understand gradable adjectives as composing directly with arguments to yield truth values, i.e. they are not of type , but take a detour by relating measurable values to scales encoding certain dimensions (for example, length, beauty, or cleanliness), i.e. the degree to which a property in a given context can be said to hold for an entity. On this view, these adjectives include measure functions as parts of their meaning, i.e. they are usually considered to be of type ,74 denoting relations between individuals and degrees on scales (for earlier studies along these lines see e.g. Bartsch & Vennemann 1972; Bierwisch 1989; Cresswell 1976). Thus, degrees constitute abstract measurement representations, while scales are characterized as sets of ordered degrees of a given dimension. While degree semantic approaches have largely been pursued independently of settheoretic ones and do not usually feature in analyses of adjective order restrictions, a brief overview of the typology established by Kennedy (2007) and Kennedy & McNally (2005) will prove profitable for the larger picture, as recent studies have tried to establish links between an adjective’s degree semantics and the distinction between individual- and stage-level predicates (cf. Husband 2012; Toledo & Sassoon 2011; see in particular 2.3. below). 74 Or some version thereof: Kennedy (2007: 4–5), for example, considers gradable adjectives measure functions per se, i.e. type , and degree morphology, including a Ø-morpheme for positive forms of adjectives, to be responsible for turning them into properties of individuals, whereas Kennedy & McNally (2005: 356) understand them as directly relating degrees and individuals.

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62

According to Kennedy & McNally (2005) and Kennedy (2007), there is a split in the class of gradable adjectives that relates to the degrees they pick out on their respective scales in their positive form, with scales hypothesized to be part of an item’s lexical semantics. This split is argued to allow for assigning them relative or absolute standards, respectively, with relative gradables being vague in their positive form, whereas absolute gradables are not (at least in a given sense or use, i.e. adjectives may have relative as well as absolute uses; see 2.3.2.). The primary data source for the classification is provided by degree and proportional modifiers such as completely, 100%, perfectly, half, mostly, or slightly, which allow for grouping adjectives into those addressing a maximum or minimum endpoint on a scale, both, or neither. The illustrations in (62), adapted and extended from Kennedy & McNally (2005: 355) and Toledo & Sassoon (2011: 136), demonstrate the reasoning for the modifiers slightly, perfectly, and half,75 which are argued to map adjectives to minimum and maximum endpoints (albeit in crucially different ways): (62)

SCALE STRUCTURE TYPOLOGY

a.

OPEN

/ CONTEXTUAL (MIDPOINT ) STANDARD (e.g., tall; nice; expensive) → X is *slightly/ *perfectly/ *half tall/ nice/ expensive.

b.

LOWER- CLOSED

/

c.

UPPER- CLOSED

/ MAXIMUM STANDARD (e.g., clean, dry, straight) → X is *slightly/ perfectly/ *half clean/ dry/ straight.

d.

TOTALLY CLOSED

(e.g., dirty; wet; bent) → X is slightly/ *perfectly/ *half dirty/ wet/ bent. MINIMUM STANDARD

(e.g., full; empty; open; closed) → X is ?slightly/ perfectly/ half full/ empty/ open/ closed.

Thus, an adjective is interpreted with respect to a contextual standard iff. its scale is open and to a non-contextual scalar endpoint iff. its scale is closed (partially or totally). The reasoning is essentially as follows: the open scale adjectives in (62a) are relative, because of their inherent vagueness and need of a comparison class, viz. the standard they pick out on their respective scales 75 As Kennedy & McNally (2005: fn.9) note, there are additional uses for several maximizing modifiers like totally, completely etc., which roughly translate to very, i.e., make them intensifiers rather than maximizers. The authors’ claim is that the two uses can be told apart by their entailments: the maximizing use entails that an endpoint has been reached, while the intensifying use is non-proportional; thus, (ia) is contradictory, while (ib) is contingent: (i) a) #The line is totally straight, though you can make it straighter. b) I’m totally intrigued by bowling, and Kim is even more intrigued by it than I am.

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is always context-dependent and fixed by the same variety of non-trivial means indicated, for example, for dimension adjectives in 1.2.2.3. above. Thus, they are not felicitous with modifiers that trigger maximum endpoints on scales. For lower-closed adjectives, as in (62b), it holds that they are true of their arguments if the latter show a minimum amount of the property in question, while a maximum endpoint is not straightforwardly available. Hence, they can be modified by a lower-end-oriented modifier such as slightly, but not by an upper-endoriented one such as perfectly. Their antonyms, in turn, are upper-closed adjectives (see (62c)) and show the reverse behavior, picking out an absolute maximum (felicitous with perfectly) and not allowing for lower-end-oriented slightly. The antonyms distributed over (62b/c), i.e. dirty-clean, wet-dry, and bent-straight, are thus the direct analogs of Rotstein & Winter’s (2004) dichotomy of ‘total’ (the respective second items of the pairs) vs. ‘partial adjectives’ (the first ones). Finally, totally closed scales are characterized by maximum endpoints on either side, presumably licensing both kinds of proportional modifiers. Moreover, they are the only ones allowing for half-modification, which is taken to simultaneously call for availability of both endpoints. The adjectives mapping on the three different closed scales in (62b–d) are called absolute, as they address maximum and/or minimum endpoints of said scales. Crucially, all of the above examples in (62b-d) are gradable, as such taken to be of the same semantic type as relatives – i.e. –, and thus essentially providing the same kind of meaning contribution (cf. Kennedy 2007: 22–23). This is indicated by their acceptability as direct comparatives in (63) and their compatibility with a range of different degree modifiers in (64), which sets them apart from proper non-gradables as in (65) (examples from Kennedy 2007: 22 and partly adapted to suit the ones used for the above scales): (63)

(64)

(65)

a.

The table is wetter than the floor.

b.

The pipe is straighter than the hose.

c.

The door isn’t as open as I want it to be.

a.

The floor is less dry than the table.

b.

The pipe is too bent to allow for the flow of water.

c.

The door is closed enough to keep out the light.

a.

*/?The table is more wooden than the floor.

b.

*/?The door isn’t as locked as I want it to be.

c.

*/?This rod is too hand-made to be of use for this purpose.

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Support for the relative-absolute divide appears to be found in Siegel-/Vendlerstyle for-PPs (cf. 1.2.2.2.) that can be taken as natural determiners of comparison classes and can therefore add possible extra information to relative adjectives as in (66), while they are at least odd as adjuncts76 to the absolute ones in (67) (cf. Kennedy 2007; Sassoon & Toledo in prep.): (66)

(67)

a.

The Port of Hamburg is shallow for a seaport.

b.

Thomas Müller is nice for a German.

a.

This nail is bent/straight (?for a wire nail).

b.

The door is closed/open (?for a kitchen door).

Moreover, entailment patterns provide evidence for the class divide. Relative adjectives select central or midpoint standards on scales via contextual information – therefore they do not give rise to positive or negative entailments in direct comparisons as illustrated in (68). In contrast, absolute adjectives in comparable constructions elicit these very inference patterns, i.e. positive entailment for minimum standard adjectives as in (69a) and negative entailment for maximum standard adjectives as in (69b) (all examples adopted from Kennedy & McNally 2005: 360): (68)

(69)

a.

Rod A is longer than rod B.

⊭ Rod A/B is (not) long.

b.

Rod A is shorter than rod B.

⊭ Rod A/B is (not) short.

a.

The floor is wetter than the countertop.

⊨ The floor is wet.

b.

The floor is drier than the countertop.

⊨ The countertop is not dry.

Thus, while direct comparison with relatives entails that X exceeds Y on a given scale Z, it does not entail that either X or Y does (not) exceed the standard degree for a given dimension. Minimum standard adjectives, so the claim, entail that one of their arguments has to exceed the non-contextual standard of their lower-closed scale, while maximum standard adjectives entail that the opposite argument meets or exceeds the maximum standard of an upper-closed scale. Obviously, the relative-absolute divide is not free of complications, either. A very general caveat concerns the ontological status of degrees and scales. While individuals (and their properties) are less controversial as universal categories,

76 Or complements depending on the syntactic analysis of for-phrases of adjectives.

Semantics and subclassification of adjectives

65

the abstractness of scales and (numerical) degrees and the unclear status as regards how and where they reside lets them appear dubious to several authors (cf. e.g. the comments in Moltmann 2004). The more data-oriented concerns in particular relate to the assumed absence of vagueness of absolute adjectives, a core ingredient of the McNally-Kennedy typology. The problem is essentially the same as the one discussed in 1.2.2.3. with respect to the question of intersective adjectives’ noun-neutrality argued for by Partee (1995) and Vendler (1968). Thus, for example, Cruse (1980), Rotstein & Winter (2004), and Toledo & Sassoon (2011) argue against a universally fixed endpoint for many of the absolute adjectives introduced in (62b–d), given what they regard as context-dependency for adjectives such as clean – what may count as clean for a kitchen knife, could well be considered contaminated, i.e. not clean enough, for a scalpel used for surgery. Similarly, at least to the connoisseur, a regular espresso cup (or a glass of wine) is full when filled to somewhere between one third and half, while a customer in a pub will likely reject a glass of beer if not filled up to a point at least close to the glass’s opening.77 While Cruse and Rotstein & Winter circumvent these complications by either assuming endpoints on contextually relativized scales (Cruse) or not point- but interval-denoting contributions by total adjectives such as clean (Rotstein & Winter), Kennedy & McNally (2005) and Kennedy (2007) retain the supposition that absolute adjectives address context-independent endpoints. Aware of the potential discomfort this claim brings about, the latter authors put a fairly great deal into arguing that using endpoint-denoting expressions in, strictly speaking, non-legitimizing contexts – such as the half-filled espresso cup – are instances of loose talk, speaking false, or imprecise use. Crucially, the conventional meaning of absolute adjectives is taken as making reference to scalar endpoints proper (cf. e.g. Kennedy 2007: §3.2.1.; Kennedy & McNally 2005: 356–357). Justifying the absolute truth-conditions they furnish absolute adjectives with, they draw upon economy principles – intended to simplify meaning composition by constraining possible interpretations – such as the one in (70): (70) INTERPRETIVE ECONOMY (cf. Kennedy 2007: §4.3.) Maximize the contribution of the conventional meanings of the elements of a sentence to the computation of its truth conditions. Degree-based typologies are argued to provide explanatory bases for a variety of linguistic data as well as evidence for the make-up of lexical entries and 77 Let alone cultural questions in a narrower sense and, for example, British or Dutch tendencies to fill beer glasses up to the very top.

66

The word class ‘adjective’

the mental lexicon in general. For example, Kennedy & McNally (2005) and Kennedy (2007) claim scales to be a necessary part of a gradable adjective’s lexical entry, which in turn will allow for distributional facts and selectional restrictions of degree modifiers. In particular as regards the relationship between base verbs and their derived deverbal adjectives, the authors also use scalar representations for their claim to extend gradability as a feature to other lexical categories than adjectives. While conjectures with respect to the relation of absolute adjectives and temporariness / the IL-SL-distinction are already to be found in Kennedy & McNally (2005) and Kennedy (2007), the connection has been fleshed out in more detail in recent publications (see Husband 2012; Sassoon & Toledo in prep.; Toledo & Sassoon 2011). The discussion in this regard will be resumed in 2.3.

1.3 Chapter summary The chapter at hand has provided a general, yet necessarily non-exhaustive overview of adjectives as a word class. Intended as a stage-setter, it has largely retraced a variety of central theoretical approaches to adjectives from crosslinguistic as well as language-specific perspectives, functional differences as regards their use, and modification patterns exhibited by different subclasses. Foreboding central concerns of the chapters to follow, I have perennially made reference to the concept of temporariness and its connection to adjectives. Thus, for example, several functionalist perspectives and prototypicality approaches to word classes assign adjectives an intermediary status between the two more essential – at least from a core grammatical standpoint – lexical classes verbs and nouns. Besides more grammatical commonalities between adjectives and nouns as well adjectives and verbs in comparison to the similarities between nouns and verbs, prototypical adjectives are also argued to be an in-between class in terms of temporal stability of the concepts they encode. While hardly generalizable to adjectives as a class, the perspective is instructive as a vantage point for the discussion in ch.2, which will retrace the hypothesis that a binary grammatical divide exists – between SL- and IL-predicates – that cuts through the verb and the adjective classes, yet (largely) denies nouns (or NPs) SL-status. Temporariness has also been employed as regards the distinction between predicative and attributive uses of adjectives. While a general consensus appears to prevail that the better part of adjectives display fairly similar semantic contributions in predicative as well as attributive use, it is well-known that a variety of interpretational as well as distributional differences exist between the two. Amongst other things, the overarching concepts of referent- and referencemodification have been introduced, including the assessment brought forth in

Chapter summary

67

the literature that predicative is more intricately bound to transitory property concepts than attributive use, the latter often claimed to more typically feature as instances of permanent modification. Despite the preponderance of evidently transitory concepts encoded by predicative-only expressions as well as the large number of evidently permanent ones predominantly found among attributiveonlys, in particular relational adjectives, the predicative-attributive divide has been argued to be hardly systematic with respect to temporariness. The remainder of the chapter has introduced an extract of the multitude of adjective typologies and classification systems. This, to a degree, has been an eclectic overview in that descriptively oriented classifications, availing themselves mostly of notional concepts such as color, size, civilization terms, etc. (clustering in the two superclasses quality and relational adjectives), have been juxtaposed to formally oriented typologies that aim at capturing differences in modification patterns and how these can be accounted for compositionally. In particular in ch.3, which deals with order restrictions of multiple prenominal adjectives, however, it will become clear that the very notional classes often neglected by formal semanticists do feature prominently in DP-structure models proposed by several formal syntacticians. As regards formal typologies, the focus has been put on the set-theoretic notions of inter- and subsectivity as well as (one strand of) degree-based approaches. The two have been shown to overlap substantially, not the least in their potential shortcomings with respect to the assumed denotation independence of one of their subclasses each. Both approaches will be resumed at different points throughout the following chapters, with intersectivity often argued to be a driving force for adjective order restrictions78 and scale structure hypothesized to crucially inform the SL-ILdistinction in the realm of adjectives.

78 I will, however, argue in ch.3 that the observations as regards order restriction within DP are in fact better captured by the relative-absolute-divide than in terms of intersectivity vs subsectivity.

Chapter 2

Individual-level, stage-level, and temporariness Chapter 1 has introduced several, at times unrelated classification systems proposed in the literature for the adjective class. These systems have made use of notional definitions, distributional considerations, set-theoretic and inferencebased patterns, as well as combinations thereof. Mostly in passing, temporariness or transitoriness as opposed to durability or permanence have been mentioned in this respect – yet, these notions have in no way been systematically applied to the classification systems. The conflation of temporariness with adjectival subclasses is the major objective of this chapter. The point of departure for this discussion – nowadays arguably a selfexplanatory one – is the distinction between individual-level (IL) and stage-level (SL)1 predicates. Crucially, the most fundamental distinction between these two assumed predicate types, although a slippery and controversial one, is based on the very notions of temporariness and permanence. Kratzer’s (1995) introductory remarks to her influential paper on the issue are instructive in this regard: »That I am sitting on this chair is a very transitory property of mine. That I have brown hair is not. The first property is a stage-level property [. . .]. The second property is an individuallevel property. Stage-level properties are expressed by stage-level predicates. And individuallevel properties correspond to individual-level predicates.« (Kratzer 1995: 125; italics in the original)

Following Carlson’s (1980) terminology, SLs are considered true of temporal stages of an argument, while ILs are considered true of an individual as such. The two examples in the above quotation (i.e. sitting on this chair and having brown hair) already illustrate that the IL-SL-distinction is not primarily one exclusive to adjectives. Advocates of the distinction, in fact, conceive of it as a basic ontological opposition, cutting through several word/predicate classes and, while conceptual in nature, responsible for a diverse range of grammatical reflexes (cf. e.g. Carlson 1980; Kratzer 1995; Milsark 1974; Stump 1985). IL and SL as phenomena in copula-adjective constructions are often taken to display an overt realization in Romance multiple-copula-languages such as Catalan, (Castilian) Spanish, or Portuguese in that certain expressions are argued to 1 I will use SL and IL as short-cuts for ‘stage-’ and ‘individual-level predicates’ throughout the following chapters, yet also use them in combination with other nouns such as SL-adjective. In these latter uses, the ‘predicate’-part is understood to be dropped.

Individual-level, stage-level, and temporariness

69

select only certain copulae (see Marín 2010 for an overview of the ‘ser-estaropposition’), while, e.g., the copulae be/sein in English/German were homophonous realizations of polysemous expressions. While initially conceptualized differently, the difference between having brown hair and sitting on a chair is nowadays mostly understood as an argument-structural one, with the latter expression featuring an event argument the former supposedly lacks. The distinction is related, yet only seemingly tantamount to the venerable philosophical opposition of ‘essence’ and ‘accident’ in the tradition of Aristotelian essentialism. For example, Bolinger (1973) explicitly conflates transitoriness with accident and permanence with essence. The conception of the IL-class, however, appears far broader. In predominant philosophical terms (also modern ones), essence is clearly a more marked-off notion than what modern linguistics has come to call ‘individual-level’ and is not necessarily bound to temporal questions. For example, wooden or red are ascribed IL-status – given the linguistic diagnostics described in the chapters below as well as their typical durability – while being made of wood or being red do not necessarily count as an essential but accidental properties for, say, a chair that happens to be red and made from wood (cf. e.g. Robertson & Atkins 2013; Ulfig 1997).2 Also, SL and IL only seemingly coincide with the opposition of object-defining and optional properties (as well as the D- and O-predicates encoding them, respectively) in the sense of Kaufmann (1995), as the D-O-classification is independent of questions of temporariness as well. According to Kaufmann, D-predicates can easily be shed, as long as the void left behind is re-filled – in other words, defining properties are conceptually necessary for objects of a kind, but may be subject to change (depending on the kinds of objects and properties). Thus, for an ordinary object such as a ball, color is object-defining, yet by no means fixed, and the object’s defining conceptual space will include all different sorts of colors. Simplifying, if the ball does not cease to exist (i.e. as an instance of the kind ball), it needs to have some, but can conceivably change in color (i.e. as different instantiations of the same dimension). This latter possibility is essentially denied for IL-predicates. In contrast, optional properties are not kindrelated in the same necessitating manner as defining properties and thus work on object-level, viz. instances of the kind. While overlapping substantially (cf. ibid.: 391–392), these are not tantamount to SL-predicates. Thus, a predicate such as know French – considered typically IL qua assumed permanence and 2 With respect to adjectives, a closer correlate of the essence-accident divide in linguistic terms possibly appears to show up in anti-universalist theories making use of tropes (cf. e.g. Moltmann 2004).

70

Individual-level, stage-level, and temporariness

the grammatical test environments introduced below – would cluster as an O-predicate in Kaufmann’s classification. In general, the picture to emerge in the following shows the distinction to be a rather problematic one if taken at face value as a core grammatical and dualistic classification of predicates (a standpoint shared with a variety of authors, e.g. Jäger 1999; 2001; Maienborn 1999; 2003; and to (far) lesser degrees Fernald 2000; Husband 2012; Higginbotham & Ramchand 1997). In particular Jäger (1999: 74–77; 2001: 96–99) and Maienborn (2003: ch.4) provide concise and well-arranged stock-takes that show that the different diagnostics argued to culminate in two binary classes do not adequately follow the data. The chapter is structured as follows: 2.1.1. provides a concise overview of the syntactic environments most pertinent to the IL-SL-contrast as well as a range of counterexamples. While I will in general try to confine the discussion to adjectives, I will there also make use of predicates from other word classes. Given the fairly diffuse picture manifested by the diagnostics, 2.1.2. only very superficially touches upon some of the most prominent explanatory attempts at capturing the contrast. 2.2. deals with lexical aspect, in particular as regards adjectives, and the thorny issue of temporariness as a basis for the IL-SL-contrast. In 2.3., the relationship between the adjectival subclasses carved out in ch.1 and the contrast at hand is addressed, while 2.4. concludes.

2.1 Data and Theories for the IL-SL-contrast A fairly wide variety of diagnostics has been proposed in the literature to illustrate the distinction between IL- and SL-predicates. In general, the emerging picture is claimed to reveal that SLs appear either grammatical and/or more acceptable in (nearly) all of the identified testbeds, while ILs do not / are less acceptable, or that SLs provide additional interpretations not available with ILs in the otherwise same environments. Crucially, the discussed data are oftentimes restricted to out-of-the-blue contexts and are hypothesized to be down to the lexical semantics of the two predicate classes (cf. e.g. Chiercha 1995; Kratzer 1995). It is thus oftentimes argued that the acceptability differences in the constructions illustrated below are all based on the same fundamental lexical differences. Critical itemizations akin to the one in this section (as well as section 2.1.2.) are provided in a number of publications, some of which are more in-depth in their analyses and discussions (see e.g. Chiercha 1995: 177– 181; Fernald 2000: ch.2; Husband 2012: ch.1; Jäger 1999; 2001; Maienborn 1999; 2003: chs.2/4). With detailed discussions of the environments beyond the scope of this study, it is nonetheless necessary to at least sketch the basics of what is oftentimes presumed to be a clear-cut distinction in order to set the stage for

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71

the later attempt at integrating SLs and ILs into different adjectival subclasses (section 2.3.). This section thus intends to provide a rough compendium of the data (as well as some of their inadequacies). A general note on terminology: The use of the terms IL and SL, which will also be upheld in chs.3/4, is primarily down to reasons of brevity and not to be taken as a commitment to the distinction as such – I am at least critical as regards the status of a binary, grammatically encoded class. To get the discussion off the ground, the short list of predicates in (71) is adapted from Milsark (1974: 210) and Stump (1985: 67–68) and may serve as a vantage point as well as for means of verification. On the left, we supposedly find (typical) SL-, on the right IL-predicates (or general notional classes to which expressions belong). While mostly adjectival, the predicates enumerated here display the conception of an across-the-board distinction which penetrates all lexical classes:3 (71)

SL-predicates

IL-predicates

sick (in bed) drunk hungry stoned tired closed alert open clothed alone naked asleep ly(ing) on the beach stand(ing) on a chair

shape adj. all NPs4 color Adj. crazy intelligent be(ing) intelligent American be(ing) American beautiful boring fat be(ing) fat weigh(ing) over 200 lbs. stand(ing) over six feet tall

2.1.1 Diagnostics 2.1.1.1 Existential sentences The probably earliest observation as regards the distinction at hand is made by Milsark (1974; 1977)5 and concerns the grammaticality of different expressions in 3 The terms IL and SL date back to Carlson (1980). Milsark (1974) uses a slightly different terminology (state-descriptive and property predicates) to refer to the essentially same distinction (cf. Milsark 1974: 211). Besides, Milsark only has in mind the coda position of existential sentences in English (see below) and does not yet abstract to the general distinction reconsidered in this chapter. 4 This relates to NPs in non-predicative use (or with a progressivized copula) – for example, Stump (1985: 67) includes be(ing) a bastard in his list of SLs. See also the list in Maienborn (2003: 30) and the inclusion of relational nouns such as bride, victim, or witness. 5 At least from a formal perspective and as regards the IL-SL-distinction. Temporariness and permanence as grammatical phenomena have obviously been identified earlier; see e.g. Bolinger (1967; 1973).

72

Individual-level, stage-level, and temporariness

coda positions of existential sentences in English (the ‘predicate restriction’ in Milsark’s words). In general, the term ‘existential sentence’ is reserved to specialized constructions – making use of expletives in subject position in most languages – that introduce new, non-presupposed entities into the discourse and express their existence. Existential interpretations are opposed to generic and presupposed ones (for an overview of existential sentences see McNally 2011; cf. also Husband 2012: ch.1). Husband (2012: 10) argues that there-constructions in English provide the most reliable and robust test environment: while the SLs in (72) tend to be grammatical as there-codas (and in German equivalents), the ILs in (73) are not:6 (72)

(73)

a.

There are people naked/stoned/drunk/tired (in the garden).

a.’

Da sind Leute nackt/bekifft/betrunken/müde (im Garten).

b.

There are doors open/closed (in the house).

b.’

Da sind Türen offen/geschlossen (im Haus).

a.

*There are people intelligent/beautiful/boring (in the garden).

a.’

*Da sind Leute intelligent/schön/langweilig (im Garten).

b.

*There are doors golden/wooden/rectangular (in the house).

b.’

*Da sind Türen golden/hölzern/rechteckig (im Haus).

[SLs]

[ILs]

The alleged division of admissible codas, however, is not without counterexamples. As noted by Bäuerle (1994: 22–23), adjectives such as erstaunt ‘astonished’ (74a) or erfreut ‘delighted’ (74b), which should be SL-items as regards transitoriness and cluster as such according to other IL-SL diagnostics (see e.g. 2.1.1.3.), are at least clearly marked in the very same contexts used in (72). Note that it seems far-fetched to assume that these adjectives differ in terms of transitoriness in opposition to, e.g. happy, tired, or naked (for me, intuitively, the state of being erfreut is typically, if anything, of shorter duration or more instantaneous than the semantically closely related glücklich ‘happy’): (74)

a.

*/?Da sind Leute überrascht (im Garten). ‘There are people astonished (in the garden).’

b.

*/?Da sind Leute erfreut (im Garten). ‘There are people delighted (in the garden).’

6 ’-examples are again literal translations. The sentences in (72) and (73) are usually argued to show the acceptability/grammaticality effects irrespective of the locative PPs provided in brackets here – however, the SL-examples appear somewhat odd without them, while they do not improve the IL-examples (cf. Husband 2012: 9).

Data and Theories for the IL-SL-contrast

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2.1.1.2 Bare plurals A related phenomenon concerns possible post-verbal DPs in existential sentences and makes use of the distinction between strong and weak quantification. Largely dependent on the type of determiner heading these phrases, strong subjects are banned from existential constructions (75a), while weak ones are allowed (75b). Milsark (1977) explains these grammaticality contrasts by means of a principle against double quantification (‘definiteness restriction’ in his terms): there be already introduces existential quantification and a following DP containing a certain quantifier, i.e. a strong DET, leads to double quantification, which he claims to be banned from such constructions (for the distinction and representatives of the two classes see Milsark 1974; 1977; see also Diesing 1992): (75)

a.

*Da sind alle/die meisten/die Freunde im Garten.7 ‘There are all/most/the friends in the garden.’

[strong]

b.

Da sind viele/einige/vier/Ø Freunde im Garten. ‘There are many/some/four/Ø friends in the garden.’

[weak]

Returning to the IL-SL diagnostics, the observation in (75) has a reflex in what has become known as subject effects. As (75b) shows, bare plurals (marked as Ø here) join the class of weak nominals. Following Carlson’s (1980) observation, bare plurals in subject position of simple predicative constructions show variable behavior depending on the post-copular predicate (just as other weak nominals do, see Husband 2012: 10–11). Thus, (76a), featuring a SL-predicate, is ambiguous between a reading in which firemen are available in general (the generic interpretation – broadly speaking, reference to the class of firemen – i.e., the predicate holds for all or most X; for genericity in general cf. Krifka et al. 1995 and Mueller-Reichau 2006) and the meaning that specific or particular firemen are available (the existential reading). In contrast, (76b) features an IL-predicate and is restricted to the generic reading, i.e. the existential reading is not available (cf. Carlson 1980; see also Diesing 1992: ch.2): (76)

a.

Feuerwehrleute sind verfügbar. ‘Firemen are available.’

[SL – exist. reading possible]

b.

Feuerwehrleute sind selbstlos. ‘Firemen are altruistic.’

[IL – exist. reading not possible]

7 This examples is fine with da in its temporal reading, i.e. ‘then’ instead of ‘there’. This, however, is not the intended reading.

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Individual-level, stage-level, and temporariness

Again, an immediate qualification is in place here. Maienborn (1999: fn.4; 2003: 37) suspects the derived nature, i.e. their verbal origin, of the adjectival predicates in the standard examples (–bar/–ble-adjectives such as verfügbar ‘available’, sichtbar ‘visible’ etc.) to be responsible for the effect in (76a/b). In fact, these adjectives are peculiar, in that they have modal/passive semantics and pattern with IL-expressions rather than SLs in most tests – I will come back to –bar/–bleadjectives in 4.2.3. At least in out-of-the-blue contexts, the ‘typical’ SL-predicates in (71) above actually do not allow for the existential reading, either (as in (77)), significantly diminishing the value of this test environment for the IL-SL bifurcation (see also Glasbey 1997: 174–175; Jäger 1999: 76; 2001: 98).8 (77)

Feuerwehrleute sind müde/hungrig/aufgeregt. ‘Firemen are tired/hungry/excited.’

[SL – existential reading not possible]

Moreover, Glasbey (1997) shows that extended contextual information can well allow for existential readings in sentences with ILs comparable to (76b). Her general approach, one that is crucially different from the one taken by adherents of an IL-SL-distinction rooted in the lexicon (cf. Diesing 1992; Kratzer 1995), is based on the assumption that adjectival predicates (with the few exceptions such as available or visible often used as posterboys) do not introduce new ‘situations’ – as opposed to most verbal predicates. According to Glasbey, however, it is situations which along the lines of the Davidsonian paradigm introduce event arguments. The lack of existential readings in the cases (76b) and (77) is thus – irrespective of being presumably IL or SL – based on the very nature of adjectival predication. In turn, appropriate contexts can supply the situation necessary for existential readings, allowing for existential readings with SLs as well as ILs. Thus, for the a-examples – SL and IL, respectively – in (78a/b) and (79a/b) existential readings are hardly available, while the situated context in the b-examples supports such interpretations (examples adapted from Glasbey 1997: 170–171; 174): (78)

a.

Children are sick.

[SL – exist. not possible]

b.

We must get a doctor. Children are sick.

[SL – exist. possible]

8 Maienborn (2003:37) refers the reader to Bäuerle (1994: 23) for this adequate observation. Bäuerle, however, in fact criticizes the supposed transitory-permanent distinction as regards existential constructions and claims that an item such as astonished, which in principle should be SL, is ungrammatical in the pertinent test environments (see (74)).

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(79)

a.

Drinkers are under-age.

[IL – exist. not possible]

b.

John is shocked by his visit to the pub. Drinkers are under-age, drugs are on sale, and fights break out regularly.

[IL – exist. possible]

2.1.1.3 Perception reports Carlson (1980: 124–126), following observations by Siegel (1980), argues for a further restriction concerning ILs. These predicates appear to be banned from the complement position of perception verbs. In contrast, Carlson claims at least see, hear, and watch to take the whole range of SLs as complements and several other perception verbs to take at least a subset of them.9 The contrast is illustrated in (80a) and (80b) for SLs and ILs, respectively: (80)

a.

Johannes sah Maria nackt/betrunken/müde. ‘John saw Mary naked/drunk/tired.’

[SL]

b.

*Johannes sah Maria intelligent/erfahren/schön. ‘John saw Mary intelligent/experienced/beautiful.’

[IL]

c.

Johannes sah Maria abwaschen/*abgewaschen haben/*am nächsten Tag abwaschen. ‘John sees Mary wash the dishes/having washed the dishes/ washing the dishes the next day.’

[SL]

Syntactically, the DPs + predicate in complement position are oftentimes argued to be small clauses (see Wilder 1992 for an overview of small clause constructions). In contrast, ILs as well as SLs are acceptable when embedded in full clauses as in (81). (81)

a.

Johannes sah, dass Maria nackt war. ‘John saw that Mary was naked.’

b.

Johannes sah, dass Maria intelligent/erfahren/schön war.10 ‘John saw that Mary was intelligent/experienced/beautiful.’

9 This claim is somewhat dubious, as such constructions are obviously subject to regular selectional restrictions. Thus, consider (i) and juxtapose it with (80a): (i)

?/*John

heard Mary naked.

10 There may be a slight oddness with the examples in (81b), arguably down to what has been termed life time effects; see below – with ILs, the past tense copula in fact seems to suggest that Mary is no longer alive. A present tense copula in this case (with the matrix clause in past tense), however, leads to a fairly strong inference that Mary is still alive and still intelligent/ beautiful etc.

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c.

Johannes sah, dass Maria abwusch/abgewaschen hatte/am nächsten Tag abwaschen würde. ‘John saw that Mary washed the dishes/had washed the dishes/would wash the dishes the next day.’

Fernald (2000: 17–18) argues the difference between the examples in (80) and (81), the latter grammatically on a par, to lie in the distinction between direct and indirect evidence, respectively. The distinction is illustrated in the comparison between (80c) and (81c). The former does entail that John directly observes Mary in the process of washing the dishes; thus, the constructions in which perception time and the time of washing up clash (abgewaschen haben and am nächsten Tag abwaschen) are ungrammatical. The latter cases in (81c) can also hold – and preferably do so, in fact – if John simply finds some evidence that makes him assume that Mary must be in the process of washing up, has washed up, or will do so the next day; in all of these scenarios, the sentences are fine irrespective of tense in the CP-complement. Maienborn (2003: 65–66) in this regard points to the essentially same distinction between situational and factual perception. Once more, however, counter-examples can readily be found. As for example Jäger’s (2001: 97) stock-take illustrates, we again find a division between what is presumably a homogenous class of SL-adjectives: The standard examples available and present, which have been shown to allow for existential readings as in (76a), do not in fact felicitously feature in the environments at hand; see (82a). Besides, other adjectives that clearly should be SLs according to the transitoriness criterion also fall out; see (82b–d) (examples b–d adapted from Maienborn 2003: 70): (82)

a.

*Wir sahen die Polizisten verfügbar/anwesend. ‘We saw the policemen available/present.’

b.

*Angela sah die Blätter welk. ‘Angela saw the leaves withered.’

c.

*Karin sah die Hose fleckig. ‘Karin saw the trousers stained.’

d.

*Bardo sah die Vase kaputt. ‘Bardo saw the vase broken.’

2.1.1.4 Locative and temporal modification A further diagnostic oftentimes invoked concerns the possibility of temporal and locative modification (cf. Chiercha 1995; Fernald 2000; Kratzer 1995). Kratzer

Data and Theories for the IL-SL-contrast

77

(1995: 126–129) argues for a minimal assumption concerning SLs: Accordingly, all SLs are equipped with an argument for spatiotemporal location, i.e. they are locatable in time and space – ILs, in turn, are not. Thus, she considers be dancing stage-level and consequently to felicitously occur with temporal (see (83a)) and locative (see (83b)) modifiers. In contrast, be a dancer11 in (83c) is regarded as individual-level (examples adapted from Kratzer 1995: 128; Chiercha 1995: 177): (83)

a.

Manon is dancing in the morning.

b.

Manon is dancing on the lawn.

c.

Manon is a dancer (*in the morning/*on the lawn).

d.

John was drunk yesterday/last month/last year.

e.

*John was tall yesterday/last month/last year.

However, the assumed incompatibility of nouns (or ILs in general) clearly seems to allow for exceptions. In (84a–c), adapted from Fernald (2000: 23), be a dancer still clearly should count as IL; yet, it is fully grammatical with (certain) temporal modifiers and/or additional contextual information. (84d) is taken from Percus (1997: 95), who also argues lack of contextual clues in out-of-the-blue contexts to be at the bottom of many infelicitous examples of the kind IL + temporal modifier: (84)

a.

Manon was a dancer in 1978.

b.

Manon was a dancer when he was younger.

c.

Manon is a dancer this morning, although she usually features as an actress.

d.

John has the amazing ability to learn languages in a single weekend. I see John every week and every week he knows a new language. This Tuesday, he knew French.

e.

[. . .] the traffic light was red at the time of the collision.12

(84a/b) – in contrast to (83c) – show that the duration of the temporal modifier plays a crucial role in evoking grammaticality effects that reflect the IL-SLdistinction, with expressions that encode short durations being unacceptable 11 Again, both Carlson (1980) and Milsark (1974; 1977) consider all nouns IL and adjectives and verbs to show variable behavior. 12

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as temporal modifiers of ILs, while those encoding longer durations being permissible. (84c/d), on the other hand, even cast this generalization into doubt: Given an appropriate context, ILs can be modified by expressions of the kind this morning. (84e), in turn, appears to show that if we can easily accommodate the change potential of the subject noun, traffic light in this case, with respect to an adjectival predicate, even hardcore IL-adjectives such as color terms allow for temporal modification if the argument allows for change with respect to the predicate. As regards locative modification, in particular Maienborn (2003; 2004) advocates the view that the typical examples of adjectives in predicative use plus locative modifiers are inappropriate SL-vs-IL-indicators, but, quite the contrary, reveal a fairly homogeneous picture. Distinguishing between situation-internal, situation-external, and frame-setting locatives (for the technicalities of the types of locative modifiers, see Maienborn 2001), she argues copula-predicate complexes, irrespective of whether the predicate is of type IL or SL, to be infelicitous with the former two (situation-in-/-external), see (85a–b), and principally grammatical with the latter kind (frame-setters), see (85c–d) (examples adopted from Maienborn 2003: 82–84): (85)

a.

*Der Sekt ist (gerade) im Wohnzimmer warm.13 ‘The champagne is (right now) warm in the living room.’

[SL]

b.

*Heidi ist (gerade) vor dem Spiegel eitel. ‘Heidi is (right now) vain in front of the mirror.’

[IL]

c.

Heidi war in der Disco müde/betrunken/hungrig. ‘Heidi was tired/drunk/hungry in the disco.’

[SL]

d.

Heidi war in Portugal Vegetarierin/?intelligent/blond. ‘Heidi was a vegetarian/intelligent/blond in Portugal.’

[IL]

2.1.1.5 When-Conditionals As pointed out by Kratzer (1995: 129–132), when-clauses (as well as if-clauses) restrict the domain of (hidden) operators (roughly always in the case of whenconditionals) – the grammaticality of sentences containing when-adjuncts relies 13 Maienborn (2003: 84) makes use of the adverb gerade ‘right now’ to roughly indicate the VP-boundary in German. Thus, she claims, it is ensured that we are dealing with situationmodifying adverbials, not with frame setters. Sentence (85a) is definitely better without the additional gerade – however, it is not necessarily outright ungrammatical with the adverb, either, based on my own intuition and several of my informants.

Data and Theories for the IL-SL-contrast

79

on the availability of variables these operators can bind. Analyzing indefinites as free variables, she accounts for the difference between (86a) and (86b). The felicitous sentence (86c), in turn, is explained by the occurrence of an SL, which Kratzer argues to introduce – in contrast to ILs – an additional argument, i.e., a bindable variable (see also 2.1.2.):14 (86)

a.

*When John is tall, he is very tall.

[definite – IL]

b.

When a Dutchman is tall, he is very tall.

[indefinite – IL]

c.

When John is drunk, he is very drunk.

[definite – SL]

However, this distinction has also been argued to rather be one of possible iteration, as opposed to once-only instances (cf. de Hoop & de Swart 1989), instead of the IL-SL-contrast. Thus, action verbs such as kill or destroy, which have to be considered SL according to several other tests, do not yield the expected felicitousness in sentences of type (86c), see (87a). Similarly, iterability of a certain state appears to be, and not to a minor degree, a combination of the subject noun’s semantics as well as the predicate. Given that naked is considered a typical SL-adjective, it behaves as predicted by Kratzer in (87b). This, in turn, appears crucially bound to the change potential of the individual denoted by the subject (or rather, its change potential with respect to the predicate in question). In contrast, (87c) shows that the same adjective in the same test environment fails if the subject cannot easily be accommodated as being subject to change in the same way. Note that it seems perfectly fine to use statue and naked in simple copula-adjective constructions as in (87d): (87)

a.

*When John kills/destroys the bear/the computer, he kills/destroys it brutally.15

b.

When John is naked, he is buck naked.

c.

*When the statue is naked, it is buck naked.

d.

The statue is naked and shows the beauty of the human in that form.16

14 Kratzer uses verbal ILs and SLs – I have altered her examples and used adjectives in order to allow for easier comparisons with other examples and criteria. 15 Obviously, indefinite object DPs (e.g. When John kills a bear, he kills it brutally.) render the examples fine again – on this reading, however, the predicate-argument complex no longer is a once-only instance, but allows for iterability. 16 Cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Karnataka

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Individual-level, stage-level, and temporariness

2.1.1.6 Further Data17 The general picture IL-SL diagnostics are meant to reveal – as well as some of the problems that come along with them – should have become clear by now: ILs are more restricted in their use; presumably whenever a particularized, temporally and spatially bound situation is called for by a grammatical environment. Likewise, for the better part of these environments, examples have been cited that call into question the uniformity and thus explanatory power of said constructions. In the same vein, a variety of further test environments are proposed in the literature and I will merely itemize several of them in this subsection (without perpetually illustrating possible caveats or counterexamples, which is not to say that they do not exist or have not been pointed out in the literature). FREE /ABSOLUTE ADJUNCTS

As regards certain phenomena related to when-conditionals, Stump (1985: 84– 86) correlates what he calls ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ interpretations of adjuncts with the distinction between SLs and ILs, respectively. In the case of free adjuncts of main clauses that feature a modal, SLs in the adjunct allow for conditional readings, i.e. the ’-reading in (88a/a’), while ILs do not (88b/b’) – ILs always entail the proposition of the adjunct to hold for the main clause subject (examples adapted from Stump 1985: 41–42): (88)

a.

Being drunk, John would fool the whole party.

[SL]

a.’

If he was drunk, John would fool the whole party. [possible interpretation of a.]

b.

Being handsome, John would make all the girls here go nuts.

b.’

If he were handsome, John would make all the girls here go nuts. [unlikely/impossible interpretation of b.]18

[IL]

SELECTIONAL RESTRICTIONS OF CERTAIN VERBS (IN ENGLISH ) Fernald (2000: 24–29) picks up observations made by Bolinger (1973) as regards alleged grammatical essence-accident reflexes19 and relates them to the question 17 The relegation of certain diagnostics to a ‘further data’ section is a rough reflection of the relative prominence the environments have received in the literature rather than a stance on their importance. 18 Again, the examples have been adjusted to accommodate adjectives. While only free adjuncts are being illustrated here, Stump argues for the same distinction to hold in the case of ‘augmented absolute adjuncts’ (cf. Stump 1985: 272–274). 19 As stated in the introductory remarks above, the conflation of IL/SL with essence and accident is probably illegitimate (cf. Robertson & Atkins 2013).

Data and Theories for the IL-SL-contrast

81

at hand. Restricting the illustration to two diverging cases that seem relevant for the discussion, Bolinger (1973) discusses the verbs think, which has a strong tendency to accept ILs as small clause complements (89a), but not SLs (89b), and get as a (semi-)copula, showing the opposite behavior (89c/d) (examples adapted from Bolinger 1973: 62–62/67–68): (89)

a.

I thought him clever/tiresome/weak (in character).

[IL]

b.

*I thought him ready/tired/weak ( from blood loss).

[SL]

c.

Mary got ready/tired/beautiful ( for the party).

[SL]

d.

*Mary got intelligent/blond/beautiful (as she grew up).

[IL]

LIFETIME EFFECTS

Kratzer (1995: 154–156) characterizes tense predicates as expressions of spatiotemporal locations (her general source of introducing event arguments). An effect she derives from this approach is the interpretation triggered by constructions of the kind past tense copula plus IL in (90a), in which the individual the subject denotes is itself located in the past (given the lack of an event argument in the lexical representation of ILs) – the individual, ‘being in the past itself’, is thus, so the story goes, understood to be dead, hence the term ‘lifetime effect’. In contrast, no such interpretational pressure arises in constructions of the kind past tense copula plus SL in (90b), in which the individual denoted by the subject is merely understood to have displayed the characteristics denoted by the SL-predicate at the time located via the tense predicate (examples adapted from Kratzer 1995: 155–156 and Musan 1997: 271–272; for a pragmatic account and contextually enriched counter-examples to Kratzer’s 1995 core semantic approach see Musan 1997): (90)

a.

John was Welsh/fat/had blond hair. → [IL → lifetime effect triggered]

b.

John was happy/sick in bed/ate pizza. → [SL → no lifetime effect triggered]

COORDINATION TESTS

Bolinger (1973) formulates a further diagnostic – a weak one as he admits –, namely coordination data. Thus, as is shown in (91a/a’), coordination of two adjectives (in predicative as well as attributive contexts), one of which denotes a rather temporary, the other a rather permanent concept, leads to at least

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Individual-level, stage-level, and temporariness

degraded acceptability. On the other hand, (91b/b’) and (91c/c’) could be taken to show that two IL- or two SL-adjectives, respectively, fare better in coordination contexts: (91) a. a’

*/?Der */?ein

Junge ist blond und müde.

‘The boy is blond and tired.’

blonder und müder Junge

‘a blond and tired boy’

b. Peter ist groß und blond.

‘Peter is tall and blond.’

b.’ das große und blonde Kind

‘the tall and blond kid’

c. Das Baby ist nackt und müde.

‘The baby is naked and tired.’

c.’ das nackte und müde Baby

‘the naked and tired baby’

d.

*/?Peter

e.

*/?Die

ist schön und blond.

‘Peter is beautiful and blond.’

Tanzfläche ist feucht und leer. ‘The dancefloor is wet and empty.’

If a fundamental class difference is assumed between SL- and IL-adjectives, the data in (91a–c’) appear to be well in line with fairly generally accepted constraints on coordination. Thus, a typical restriction in this vein is formulated by Radford, stating that “[o]nly constituents of the same type can be coordinated” (Radford 2004: 70).20 Yet, in the examples in (91d) and (91e), two IL- (schön and blond), respectively two SL-adjectives ( feucht and leer) are coordinated and are just as odd as the ones in (91a/a’).

2.1.1.7 SL-adjectives in attributive use As far as I can tell, there are no general constraints on the attributive use of SL-adjectives. The ‘class’ of predicative-only adjectives has been introduced in 1.2.1.1. and it is evident that, in both German and English, the bulk of these expressions will typically be considered short-lived or transitory. Many of these also pass several SL-tests as is exemplarily shown in (92) for German allein as well as its English equivalent alone: (92)

a.

Wenn Hans allein ist, ist er gern allein.

a.’

When John is alone, he likes being alone. → [when-conditional]

20 The constraint of syntactic and semantic congenericity is by no means self-evident. Many felicitous coordinated structures can, in fact, best be captured by assuming asymmetric structures (see the discussion in Sternefeld 2008: 737–745).

Data and Theories for the IL-SL-contrast

b.

Hans war allein im Garten /gestern allein.

b.’

John was alone in the garden / yesterday. → [temporal/locative modification]

c.

?Ich

c.’

?I’ve

83

habe Hans allein gesehen.21

seen John alone. → [perception report]

While other predicative-onlys are far more restrictive (e.g. the evaluatives meschugge ‘meshugga’; plemplem ‘cuckoo’; see also 1.2.1.), allein/alone22 essentially cluster with the group of tired/naked/drunk, passing some but not all of the tests. As established in 1.2.1.1. and evidenced by this latter group (the tired/ naked/drunk man), temporary adjectives are not banned from attributive use at all. By their very nature, most of the test criteria, such as bare plurals or when-conditionals, do not lend themselves to testing adjectives as attributive modifiers – for English, none of the tests is available due to the general heavy restrictions on prenominal adjective complements/dependents (cf. Pullum & Huddleston 2002: 550–553). (Non-conclusive) coordination tests have been introduced above and, although clumsily, German allows at least for locative/ temporal modification and perception reports as attributive test-environments. As illustrated in (93), they roughly yield the same results as the respective predicative constructions: (93)

a.

ein in der Disco/am Morgen müdes Mädchen a in the disco/in the morning tired girl → [SL + locative/temporal modifier]

b.

*ein in der Disco/am Morgen intelligentes Mädchen a in the disco/in the morning intelligent girl → [IL + locative/ temporal modifier]

c.

?der

nackt/müde/betrunken gesehene Mann the naked/tired/drunk seen man → [SL + perception report]23

21 Opinions differ on the acceptability of (c). There is a reading for it in which allein is not part of the object-DP plus predicate small clause but refers to the seeing-event, i.e. nobody else participated. This renders the sentence fully acceptable but is not the intended reading here. 22 As well as, for example, barfuß ‘barefooted’, perplex ‘bewildered’, or pleite ‘broke’. 23 Note that in (93c/d), it is in fact the participle gesehen ‘seen’ that modifies the head noun directly. Also, the examples are slightly odd irrespective of IL/SL, with opinions among my informants particularly differing with respect to (93c).

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Individual-level, stage-level, and temporariness

d.

*der intelligent/dick/blond gesehene Mann the intelligent/fat/blond seen man → [IL + perception report]

A more general constraint appears to hold for attributive SL-adjectives in indefinite DPs in relation to the main clause predicate. In both (94a/b), for example, the main predicate is the IL kennen ‘to know’ and the object-DP is indefinite – the sentence in (94a) is unproblematic with an IL-adjective modifying within the object-DP, its SL-counterpart in (94) decidedly odd: (94)

a.

Peter kennt ein intelligentes Mädchen. ‘Peter knows an intelligent girl.’

b.

*/?Peter kennt ein nacktes Mädchen. ‘Peter knows a naked girl.’

In contrast, the otherwise same sentences with definite DPs in (95a/b) are both fine, as are the examples in (96c/d), in which the SL-main predicate appears to license all four possible combinations: (95)

(96)

a.

Peter kennt das intelligente Mädchen. ‘Peter knows the intelligent girl.’

b.

Peter kennt das nackte Mädchen. ‘Peter knows the naked girl.’

a.

Peter sieht einen / den intelligenten Mann. ‘Peter sees an / the intelligent man.’

b.

Peter sieht einen / den nackten Mann. ‘Peter sees a / the naked man.’

Thus, definiteness has a bearing on the use of temporal modifiers in sentences with IL-main predicates, in that modifiers in definite DPs can be temporally dissociated from the main predicate.24

24 For the larger picture of adjective order restrictions, this does not seem to have any effect, but has been recorded in the questionnaire study in ch.4.

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85

2.1.1.8 Summary This section has reviewed the major syntactic environments for which the supposed distinction between SL- and IL-predicates has been argued to be sensitive. While the environments are manifold, the constructions in questions have been shown to primarily concern copular and/or small clause – i.e., for the case of adjectives, predicative use. The counterexamples provided for individual environments, the unclear role of context, and the non-applicability of any of the presumed SL-items in all environments shows that, empirically, a binary opposition between the two classes seems difficult to maintain. Generally, the assumption that coercion will always be at play when ILs are felicitous in presumably SL-environments (see, for example, Fernald 1999; 2000) is a rather unpleasant one given the myriad of such cases one would have to accommodate. The next chapter overviews some of the major theories developed for the distinction and the environments just reviewed.

2.1.2 Some notes on major theoretical accounts This section only very briefly introduces some of the more prominent theoretical accounts brought forward, neither going into any detail nor discussing respective strengths or weaknesses of the theories, since this book’s ultimate object of investigation are attributive structures (as well as on empirical grounds, laid out above, which make the distinction at hand dubious in the first place; for a concise yet far more extensive summary of the accounts introduced here see e.g. Fernald 2000: ch.3).

2.1.2.1 Carlson (1980)25 Carlson (1980), to whom the nomenclature IL and SL traces back, understands the contrast as a sortal distinction between levels of entities. Accordingly, natural language ontologically discriminates between the levels kinds, objects, and stages of objects. In concrete situations, language makes reference to stages, which are themselves merely instantiations of objects concretely bound to space and time. In turn, objects, the individuals of traditional logic as drawn upon in ch.1, are the tokens that constitute a type, i.e. they are instantiations of kinds – objects and kinds make up the level of individuals. Three types of predicates are distinguished that take either only stages (SL-predicates), 25 The 1980 publication is the published edition of Carlson’s 1977 dissertation.

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Individual-level, stage-level, and temporariness

individuals (i.e. objects or kinds; IL-predicates), or only kinds (kind-levelpredicates; KL-predicates) as their arguments. Carlson uses a typed logical language that marks lexical entries of predicates along the lines of the sorts of entities their arguments are required to (or can or cannot) have. He does not regard stages as having denotations themselves, though, as they always need to be realized as individual objects by a shifting operation, for which he uses a realization relation R (cf. Carlson 1980: 69–79). Thus, in (97a) an IL-adjective is applied directly to an individual (or object), while in (97b) the SL-adjective needs the mediator R that associates stages with individuals: (97)

a.

John is intelligent.

INTELLIGENT(j)

b.

John is naked.

Ǝys [R(ys,j) & NAKED(ys)]

The major syntactic environments discussed in the literature for the former two have been introduced in the above, while KL-predicates constitute a comparably very small class of items.26 Carlson applies his theory primarily to explain subject effects as well as bare plurals and reference to kinds in general. In general, the distinction between objects and kinds, as ontological categories as well as with respect to their grammatical manifestation, is less controversial (although not necessarily well understood) than the opposition between stages and objects proper (see also ch.4).

2.1.2.2 A Matter of Argument Structure In compliance with Carlson, Diesing (1992) and Kratzer (1995) regard the distinction as a fixed lexical one, yet argue for argument-structural differences between SLs and ILs. In short, SLs are equipped with some form of Davidsonian/event/ 26 Carlson understands, for example, widespread, extinct, and invent as KL-predicates, as these can take neither objects nor stages as their arguments, but always apply to kinds or classes as in (i)–(iii): i) a. Sharks are widespread. vs b. *Alfred is widespread. ii) a. The aurochs is extinct. vs. b. (*)An aurochs is extinct. iii) Melitta Bentz invented the coffee filter. The bare plurals are default cases in subject position for kind reference. Crucially, ib) and iib) do not allow for object-level readings; while ib) is out based on the proper name in argument position, i.e. a default object-level expression, iib) can only be coerced into a subkind reading due to the indefinite article. Similarly, coffee filter does not allow for an object reading, because of the KL-predicate invent (see Krifka et al. 1995 for generic reference in general).

Data and Theories for the IL-SL-contrast

87

spatio-temporal argument, which ILs lack. An event or situation in the Davidsonian sense is perceptible (and, linguistically, event expressions can thus occur as the complement of perception verbs; see 2.1.1.3.) as well as locatable in space and time (and, linguistically, thus allows for locative and temporal modification; see 2.1.1.4.); see Davidson (1967) as well as, for an overview of event semantics, Maienborn (2003: ch.3; 2011). As illustrated in (98a), the eventive character of SLs is therefore assumed to be written down in a lexical entry’s argument structure, including an event variable an IL is claimed to lack (see (98b)). (98)

a.

naked:

λx λl [NAKED(x, l)]27

b.

intelligent:

λx [INTELLIGENT(x)]

Thus, Diesing and Kratzer follow Carlson insofar as SLs apply to concrete situations located in space and time and ILs are not bound to situations in the same way. They depart from his analysis with respect to formalization, i.e. an argument structural difference as opposed to sortal restrictions imposed by predicates on arguments. Stages, in the narrow sense, are no longer ontologically real, but the distinction boils down to an argument’s possible event participation. In particular, Kratzer uses the approach to account for a wide variety of the effects illustrated in 2.1.1., most famously the behavior of different predicates in when-conditionals (see 2.1.1.5.). Diesing’s (1992) account is essentially syntactic in nature and primarily aims at explaining subject effects via different postulated base-generation sites for subjects – either VP-internal for SLs (SpecVP) or VPexternal for ILs (SpecIP). Chiercha’s (1995) theory is similar to Kratzer’s and Diesing’s in that he assumes event arguments (situation variables on his account) to be at play and the IL-SL-contrast to be written down in an item’s lexical entry. His account, however, is neo-Davidsonian in the sense that he assumes essentially any predicate to be furnished with such an argument, i.e. not only SLs but all ILs as well.28 Chiercha captures their difference in behavior by assuming all ILs to be ‘inherently generic’, which he formalizes as a generic operator Gen that is built into ILs’ lexical entries only and binds situations at which a predicate holds. The 27 Kratzer uses ‘l’ for ‘spatiotemporal location’ as her representation of an event-like argument, pointing to the fact that she remains agnostic as to its exact nature (cf. Kratzer 1995: 128) – ‘e’ would be the more typical choice for an event argument. 28 The assumption extends to deverbal nouns as well as predicate nouns, but not necessarily to simplex object non-predicate nouns, as far as I can tell. See Maienborn (2011) for an overview of neo-Davidsonian event semantics.

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Individual-level, stage-level, and temporariness

Kratzer/Diesing style entry in (98b) for the IL intelligent would be rendered as (99) by Chiercha (1995: 198–199): (99) intelligent: λx Gen s [IN(x, s)] [INTELLIGENT(x, s)] Abstracting away from temporal boundedness, Gen is meant to provide the restriction on a predicate to be ‘located anywhere’ (or nowhere in particular), accommodating “the fact that one carries i-level predicates along as one changes location and that they are tendentially stable through time” (ibid.: 199; see also McNally 1994). Thus, if Joe is intelligent, he will be so wherever he goes at any arbitrary point in time extending to past and present. In turn, an SLexpression, lacking Gen but obviously including a situation argument, is spatially bound in that sense and can tehrefore be modified by locatives.

2.1.2.3 Some Divergent Perspectives As mentioned above and indicated by the counterexamples pervading the diagnostics in 2.1.1., the sources of criticism doubt the binary opposition of ILSL as a grammatical phenomenon. Following quite naturally, there is hardly one full-fledged alternative approach, but rather several that dismiss individual phenomena. Closest to a wholesale dismissal is certainly Maienborn (2003), who quintessentially, and convincingly, argues for a more restricted application of events. In her work on copular clauses, she splits in two the aspectual class of states (see 2.2. and 2.3. below for remarks on lexical aspect), arguing for a unified analysis as ‘Kimian states’29 for the complete adjective class (in predicative use) and the classic verbal ILs (state terms such know, believe, love) as well as against any analysis availing itself of event arguments in copular-predicate constructions. Maienborn understands the IL-SL divide wholly in pragmatic terms and offers analyses to this end for locative and temporal modification, agentivity, as well as for multiple-copula-languages such as Spanish or Catalan30 (cf. ibid: chs.5/6). Musan (1997) for lifetime effects (see also Mittwoch 2008), Percus (1997) for temporal modification, and Glasbey (1997) for existential readings of bare 29 An ontologically ‘poorer’ category than events that are characterized as property exemplifications bound to a certain time and a bearer of the property (cf. Maienborn 2003: 116–122). Moreover, Kimian states are set apart from Davidsonian states, i.e. truly eventive states including verbs of position such as to stand, to sit, or to lie. 30 For agentivity and adjectives see 2.2.1.2. below.

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plurals, all argue for discourse context to fairly easily provide for environments in which otherwise banned ILs can feature. Strictly speaking, these approaches do not consider many of the environments discussed above ungrammatical, but merely pragmatically odd. Jäger (1999; 2001) points out the non-uniformity of the effects and, following McNally (1998) and Lee (1996), argues for an information structural basis of the bare plural phenomena depicted in 2.1.1.2. Accordingly, atomic clauses require topics: Possible topics are either discourse salient, i.e. a priori introduced referents, or by default address a situation’s locality – the latter option is provided by SLs via their event argument, which ILs lack. Therefore, ILs enforce generic subject readings, while SLs allow for existential readings. The following sections highlight the inherent relation between the IL-SL-distinction, temporariness, and lexical aspect.

2.2 Lexical aspect and temporariness The question of the temporality of predicates is intricately bound to lexical aspect; and by extension is the IL-SL contrast. The familiar classification of verb types, going back to Aristotle and in its modern use in linguistics to Vendler (1957) and Kenny (1963), categorizes situations along the lines of ‘events’, ‘activities’, and ‘states’. Events, in addition, are commonly subdivided into ‘achievements’ and ‘accomplishments’.31 I will only briefly summarize the distinction here and then apply it to the case of adjectives, steering in the direction appropriate for our means (the literature on aspectual classes is substantial – for analyses and comments see among many others Bäuerle 1994; Dowty 1979; for an overview see Filip 2011). The common diagnostic properties applied for setting apart the categories are the binary features ‘dynamic’ and ‘telic’, which are discussed in the following.

2.2.1 Adjectival aspect and the Vendler-classification 2.2.1.1 Telicity and Dynamicity Telicity is commonly defined as featuring an inherent endpoint, i.e., depending on tense, either being complete or tending towards an end- or culmination 31 For a fifth category ‘semelfactives’ – punctual verbs such as cough or knock, being -telic/-dynamic/+punctual and negligible in this study – see Comrie (1976). For a subclass of achievements, ‘degree achievements’, see 2.3. and the discussion of absolute adjectives.

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point – the classification basis thereby crucially includes not only simple predicates but also internal nominal arguments, syntactically usually complements (cf. Husband 2012; Krifka 1998; Verkuyl 1972). Therefore, by virtue of not relying on an inherent endpoint, any atelic predicate includes as subintervals stages at which the predicate itself holds (100a) – if John is running is true, it is also true for any temporal section included therein. Telic predicates, however, do not exhibit this ‘subinterval property’ (100b) (cf. e.g. Krifka 1998) – in the examples, ‘Int’ stands for interval: (100)

a.

Int A: Int B:

John is running. John has run.

[-telic]

B ⊆ A: For any subinterval of A, B holds. b.

Int A: Int B:

John is running to the store. John has run to the store.

[+telic]

B ⊈ A: It does not hold that John has run to the store is a subinterval of John is running to the store. Dynamicity, on the other hand, concerns the internal temporal structure – a dynamic situation is usually defined as a succession of stages inducing change, a non-dynamic situation characterized by means of stativity. While the subinterval property of +dynamic in (101a) breaks down the finer-grained the intervals become, i.e. they display a lower bound, -dynamics as in (101b) hold at atomic times, i.e. at any point in time that is part of the main interval (cf. Comrie 1976; Dowty 1979): (101)

a.

John is running. [+dynamic] → does not hold at atomic times (for example the point in time at which both of John’s feet are on the ground and at which he technically does not move)

b.

John owns a house. [-dynamic] → holds at atomic times (at any subinterval of John’s owning, i.e. also at every point in time)

The typical feature matrix used to cover situation types includes punctuality as opposed to durativity as an additional feature, which is neglected here, given that all adjectives are +durative. A variant of such matrices is displayed in (102):

Lexical aspect and temporariness

(102)

TYPE

dynamic

telic

durative

event (achievement/accomplishment)32

+

+

(+/–)

activities

+

–

+

states

–

–

+

91

A variety of authors provide more fine-grained situation types and some of them explicitly include the IL-SL distinction into their classifications (for an overview see Husband 2012: 20–24). Under the assumption that the distinction is grammatically real, these approaches can be subsumed by an observation in Fernald (2000), which allows for pinpointing the aspectual realm of interest to it. Applying the feature bundles in (102) to the predicates in question, he determines the following asymmetrical rule of thumb (see also e.g. Chiercha 1995: 177):33 »As it turns out, all ILPs are stative, and all non-statives are SLPs. The only reason we have for positing the existence of the ILP/SLP distinction at all is that there exist some stative SLPs. Some of these are PPs and APs that are overtly locative (e.g., on the lawn, airborne), but others are not (e.g., out of their minds with worry, drunk, naked). For simple verbal predicates, the ILP/SLP distinction coincides nearly exactly with the stative/non-stative distinction [. . .]« (Fernald 2000: 7)

The generalization seems apt considering the items used in the diagnostics above (but see Maienborn 2003, in particular, on the distinction between state verbs and stative verbs). The verbs clustering among the ILs are the typical state verbs such as own, resemble, hate, believe, cost etc. In turn, we do not seem to find ILs among the classes of eventive (like find, reach, arrive, recognize, spot etc.) or activity verbs (like walk, drive, cut, drink etc.). So, returning to our research focus, how do adjectives blend in as regards lexical aspect? 2.2.1.2 The Situation Type of Adjectives and IL/SL A minimal assumption usually applied to adjectives is that the vast majority of them are states. Irrespective of their use as attributive modifiers or in predicative 32 Achievements and accomplishments are customarily further distinguished by the feature +/-durative, respectively. Durativity is taken as characteristic of both activities and states (while semelfactives are commonly set apart from activities due to their lack of the feature). For degree achievements, see 2.3. 33 With Fernald’s ILP and SLP translating to IL and SL as used throughout this study.

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Individual-level, stage-level, and temporariness

use, the items in the list in (103) have the characteristics -telic and -dynamic: They display the true subinterval property, i.e., for any interval A at which the property denoted by the adjective truthfully holds, there are arbitrarily finegrained subintervals B, down to atomic times, at which it holds, as well. The selection below is roughly marked with the notional categories of descriptive adjective typologies as touched upon in 1.2.2.1. (103) red, black (and all color terms), tall, short (and all dimension adjectives), round, rectangular (all shape adjectives) relational, pulmonary (and all relational adjectives in the narrow sense), drunk, naked etc. Being a state does not in itself allow for any conclusions as regards the IL-SL contrast – the property of durativity merely sets apart states from punctual situations, with the latter all being non-stative (see (102)) and by Fernald’s generalization necessarily SL. Hence, the property of durativity is merely a requirement for IL-hood, but by no means a criterion for exclusion of SLs (obviously, as can be read off from the matrix, activities are normally +durative, yet also SL). Consequently it is small wonder that among the stative adjectives in (103) we find expressions usually taken for hardcore SLs (drunk, naked) as well as such conventionally considered hardcore ILs (e.g., red, tall, round). In a nutshell, if temporariness is applied as a criterion for keeping apart stative SLs and ILs, the answer has to be found in the kind of state denoted by the individual items, i.e., in possible limitations of durativity. In this regard, a common assumption in the literature appears to be a difference between bounded and unbounded states (cf. Rothstein 2004) – the former being mere periods and encoded as SLs, i.e. they have an inherent temporal limit, while the latter are taken as preferentially non-limited states that in the least trigger as a default “the inference that temporal persistence applies” (Marín 2010: 309; see also McNally 199434). As I will argue in exploratory fashion below (see 2.2.2.), such a distinction is weak at best and seems to be highly dependent on context and the modified domain; thus, the boundary between world knowledge and grammar in this regard is blurred and clear allocations are difficult. On the other hand, the scale structure of the adjectives 34 Both Marín and McNally attribute the idea of an IL’s default inference that it holds of its argument permanently (going both back and forth in time) to Condoravdi (1992), whose talk simply appears very difficult to get hold of in written form. A similar stance is found in Percus (1997), who argues out-of-the-blue contexts to enforce time-stable readings with ILs, yet stresses the ease of circumventing the default by contextual enrichment.

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93

in question has been argued by several authors to play a central role in determining its contribution as an SL- or an IL-predicate, with SLs essentially being endstates of degree achievements (cf. e.g. Husband 2012; Kennedy & McNally 2005; Sassoon & Toledo in prep.; Toledo & Sassoon 2011) – I will come back to this point in 2.3. While some authors take the extra step and consider all adjectives stative (see for example Maienborn 2003; Vendler 1957), others argue for an aspectual division of the adjective class. In an influential paper, Lakoff (1966) applies a variety of tests to ultimately derive a mirror image along the lines of stativity: the bulk of verbs are non-statives, with few stative exceptions. This behavior is mirrored by adjectives – the bulk of them being stative, with few exceptions being non-stative. The class of presumably non-stative adjectives is notionally closely connected to evaluatives and/or human propensity adjectives (for the latter term see Dixon 1982) and is often argued to display – in certain uses – characteristics of dynamicity and agentivity. Consider the expressions in (104) (for a longer list of such items in English see e.g. Quirk et al. 1985: 434–435): (104)

polite, angry, careful, adroit, curious, patient, rude, jealous, noisy, slow, cruel, greedy, impatient, gentle, good, calm etc.

Lakoff (1966) introduces a variety of seemingly unrelated test environments, which in the meantime have found their way into textbooks and grammars (see for example Pullum & Huddleston 2002; Quirk et al. 1985). These are taken to uncover the similarities35 between ‘standard verbs’ and ‘exceptional adjectives’, on the one hand, and ‘exceptional verbs’ and ‘standard adjectives’, on the other. In (105)-(108), some of these test environments36 are exemplified by means of the pertinent adjectival (see (104)) and verbal (i.e., statives, see above) subclasses as well as their respective counterparts (see also Partee 1977 and Stump 1985: 76–79): (105)

OCCURRENCE IN PROGRESSIVE FORM

a.

*John is knowing Jerry.

b.

John is chasing Jerry.

c.

John is being polite/rude/angry.

d.

*John is being tall/fat/naked/drunk.

35 And by extension call into doubt the appropriateness of word classification along adjectival and verbal lines altogether (cf. Lakoff 1966: 12). 36 Lakoff (1966) makes use of further tests (modification by certain manner adverbials; occurrence with the adverbial for someone’s sake) that are omitted here, as they do not directly apply to adjectives.

94 (106)

(107)

(108)

Individual-level, stage-level, and temporariness

COMMAND IMPERATIVES

a.

*Know that!

b.

Chase it!

c.

Be polite/rude/angry!

d.

*Be tall/fat/naked/drunk!

PRO ‘DO -X ’/PSEUDOCLEFTS

a.

*What John did was know Jerry.

b.

What John did was chase Jerry.

c.

What she had to do (to please/annoy the hosts) was be polite/rude/ angry.

d.

*What she had to do (to please/annoy the hosts) was be tall/fat/naked/ drunk.

SELECTIONAL RESTRICTIONS ON COMPLEMENTS OF E . G . PERSUADE AND REMIND

a.

*John persuaded Jerry to know the answer.

b.

John persuaded Jerry to chase the mouse.

c.

John persuaded Jerry to be polite/rude/angry.

d.

*John persuaded Jerry to be tall/fat/naked/drunk.

The clustering of the adjectives in the respective c-examples with non-stative verbs and of the ones in the d-examples with stative verbs is evident. Equally evident, however, is that Lakoff’s set of tests can at best only be taken as a possible indicator for the stative-dynamic divide (but see Maienborn’s 2003 caveats below), yet is insufficient if consulted as a test for SL-hood. The adjectives naked and drunk in these tests cluster with tall, fat, and the like, i.e. agreed upon ILs. Mutatis mutandis, other SL-adjectives such as hungry, tired, stoned, or alone equally cluster in this group. A further problem concerns the items in (104), the presumed non-stative adjectives, as such: Many of these expressions ‘fail’ some of the diagnostics introduced above, while they clearly gain in acceptability in others. Take, for example, Stump’s (1985) paraphrase test for free adjuncts (see 2.1.1.6.) – polite or rude hardly display the behavior expected from SLs, i.e., allowing for conditional interpretations (109):

Lexical aspect and temporariness

(109)

a.

Being polite, John would easily impress my granny.

a.’

If John was polite, he would easily impress my granny. [unlikely/impossible interpretation of a]

b.

Being rude, John would alienate everyone at this party.

b.’

If John was rude, he would alienate everyone at this party. [unlikely/impossible interpretation of b]

95

If we apply the adjectives in question to perception reports as in (110), the results are at least strongly marked for both English and German – in- as well as excluding a (progressivized) copula: (110)

a.

*/?John saw Mary (being) polite/calm/rude/angry/careful/curious.

b.

*/?Johannes sah Maria höflich/ruhig/grob/böse/vorsichtig/neugierig (sein).

In turn, the very same items fare clearly better in Kratzer-style when-conditionals (see 2.1.1.5.), illustrated here for German only in (111), but equally applicable to English, making them appear rather SL-like: (111) Wenn Maria

höflich ruhig grob böse vorsichtig

ist, ist sie sehr

höflich ruhig grob böse vorsichtig

When Mary

Adji

is is she very

Adji.

In summary, the diagnostics applied in this subsection provide a diffuse picture and little initial evidence on whether the adjectives in (104) should in principle be classified as SLs or ILs. If we want to hold on to a clear-cut distinction, a possibility immediately springing to mind would be to allow for a significant number of lexically polysemous expressions – with double entries as ILs and SLs – and inflate the mental lexicon accordingly. Interestingly, this is not the route the literature pertinent to IL-SL commonly tends to take (although a variety of adjectives are argued to be IL-SL-polysemous; however, these do not apply to the distinction at hand; see e.g. Carlson 1980: 107). The adjectives in question are usually assigned IL-status (cf. e.g. Fernald 1999; Stump 1985: 77– 78), with many authors shifting the burden to the copula, which is instead taken

96

Individual-level, stage-level, and temporariness

to be polysemous (see below). Yet, given out-of-the-blue sentences as in (112), in which the adjectives are used attributively, it is not decidable whether we are dealing with a temporary state of the properties in question or an enduring, characterizing trait ascribed to the DP-referent: (112)

a.

A calm boy was sitting on a bench in the park.

b.

My polite aunt is sitting on the sofa in front of the telly.

There may be preferences for interpreting the temporal extension of the adjective in (112a) as coincidental with the main predicate in the sentence due to the indefinite subject DP, similar to Rapp’s (2014) account of attributive present participles in German.37 However, as far as I can tell, there is nothing that precludes an interpretation in both examples as either a characteristic trait (≈IL) or a momentary depiction of the subject referents’ behaviors (≈SL) in absence of further contextual clues. The decisive point is the lack of a copula to which such possible interpretative differences could be relegated. Be that as it may for the time being, the behavior in Lakoff’s diagnostics for the stative/non-stative divide of adjectives is commonly taken as an indication for a polysemous / homophonous copula be; or, rather, as evidence for one particular, further variant thereof. The possible homophony of the predicational38 copula, such as be in English or sein in German, is oftentimes argued to have a concrete surface realization in the Romance languages Catalan, (Castilian) Spanish, or Portuguese.39 Carlson (1980) as well as Stump (1985)40 distinguish three homophonous copulas ‘be1–3’: ‘be1’ occurs with predicative nouns and IL-adjectives, mapping all IL-predicates to IL-predicates and not occurring in the progressive (cf. Carlson: 104–108). ‘be2’ occurs with SLs, mapping SLs to ILs (which, in turn, ‘have’ stages); this variant is the one that is used in the regular progressive form of non-stative verbs as well SL-adjectives (cf. ibid: 110). Finally, Carlson adopts Partee’s (1977) ‘active be’, his ‘be3’, which is the one we find in the 37 Rapp (2014) argues that German prenominal present participles rely on definiteness as regards their possible temporal interpretation – only as part of definite constructions can they receive temporal interpretations not directly bound to the one of the main clause predicate. 38 Neglecting cases of equative, specificational, or identificational copula verbs (cf. e.g. Mikkelsen 2011). 39 See, for example, Marín (2010) for an overview of the selectional restrictions of Spanish adjectives in predicative use as regards the ser-estar-opposition. See also Maienborn (2003: ch.5.4) for a pragmatic explanation thereof. 40 Stump (1985) includes a fourth be, which he reserves for regular passive constructions. For his ‘be’-typology, see Stump (1985: 73–79).

Lexical aspect and temporariness

97

grammatical c’examples of (105)–(108). ‘be3’ is taken to be very different from its homophonous cousins, being roughly paraphrasable as actions in the progressive form, i.e., Be polite! ≈ Act politely! and John is being silly ≈ John is acting/behaving sillily/in a silly way – therefore, as Partee (1977) shows, it only takes animate subjects capable of fulfilling an AGENT role (cf. Carlson 1980: 119–122; see also Diesing 1992: 42–46). While the ‘non-stative’ adjectives have been shown to be a rather mixed bag in tests (109)–(111), Carlson (1980), Diesing (1992), and Stump (1985) all explicitly conflate ‘active be’ with an IL-to-SL shift. Fernald (1999, 2000), in turn, does not understand these processes as shifting operations, but as instances of evidential coercion.41 On the assumption that the items in (104) are ILs, these shifting / coercion phenomena could explain the SL-behavior of ILs in (111).42 General notes of caution are brought forth by Maienborn (2003: 57–59), second-guessing whether the Lakoff tests above are in fact suited for distinguishing between stative and dynamic situations. According to her argument, the tests (with the possible exception of the progressive) primarily aim at ‘agentivity’43 – an observation already foreboded by the term ‘active be’. Lacking agentivity, however, is claimed to neither be a sufficient nor a necessary precondition for stativity. The following examples are Maienborn’s (2003: 58) and illustrate that statives may well require animate subjects capable of taking an AGENT role (113), while non-statives may well occur with non-animate subjects incapable of doing so (114): (113)

(114)

a.

Der Künstler war anwesend. ‘The artist was present.’

b.

*Das Kunstwerk war anwesend. ‘The work of art was present.’

a.

Der Zahn wackelt. ‘The tooth is loose.’ [lit. The tooth wobbles.]

b.

Die Tür knarrt. ‘The door is creaking.’

41 Which he considers a primarily pragmatic process (cf. Fernald 1999: 59–61). 42 See also Fabregas et al. (2013), who retain the idea of evaluatives being ILs in the environments in question, yet argue agentivity readings to be too systematic a process to be captured by coercion. Their proposal makes use of eventive subjects, turning evaluatives into Davidsonian states in Maienborn’s (2003) sense. 43 Eventually, Maienborn (2003: §6.2) argues the agentivity effect to be the outcome of essentially ungrammatical sentences via processes of reinterpretation and pragmatic repair.

98

Individual-level, stage-level, and temporariness

While unlikely a case of polysemy proper, the apparent alternation between agentive / temporary and characteristic / permanent readings of evaluative adjectives will be employed in questionnaire study I (see 3.4.). Having established that adjectives are stative, irrespective of their Carlsonian class, the next section is explorative in nature, trying to put some flesh to the bone to the question of temporariness as an adequate notion via which the IL-SL-contrast could be explained. Lexical aspect will be picked up anew in 2.3.

2.2.2 Temporariness and IL-SL Bearing in mind the quotation from Kratzer (1995) in the opening paragraphs to this chapter, mapping temporariness to SL and permanence to IL, respectively, can be taken as the historical as well as ontological point of departure into the distinction. As has been well known from the initial observations of the pertinent phenomena on – we find, for example, notes of caution in Bolinger (1967: 10), albeit not with respect to SL-IL per se, and in Milsark (1974: 212) – temporariness is a slippery notion, even more so if taken as a category connected to concrete grammatical reflexes. Assessing her preceding discussion of the data, Maienborn (2003) is highly critical of the presumed core grammatical nature of the IL-SL-distinction and, as I believe, legitimately challenges the contrast by asking for its very nature: »In meinen Augen liegt eine der wesentlichen Ursachen für die eher durchwachsene Bilanz im nahezu durchgängigen Ausblenden der Frage, was der Stadien/Individuen-Distinktion denn eigentlich semantisch bzw. begrifflich zugrunde liegt. So fehlt in kaum einer der hier angesiedelten Arbeiten der Hinweis, dass die Gleichsetzung von Stadien- und Individuenprädikaten mit temporären bzw. permanenten Eigenschaften nur als grobe Annäherung zu verstehen sei [. . .], um dann möglichst rasch auf vermeintlich festen grammatischen Boden zurückzukehren [. . .].«44 (Maienborn 2003: 38–39)

Her observation of the tendency to (only passingly) mention the porous one-toone mapping of temporariness and SL-IL is certainly adequate. Representative remarks of the kind can, for example, be found in Chiercha (1995: 177–178), 44 ‘As I see it, one of the quintessential reasons for the rather mediocre stock-take can be found in the fairly persistent disregard of the question as to the semantic or conceptual basis of the distinction. Thus, pretty much every pertinent publication contains a reference that the equation of stage- and individual-predicates with temporary and permanent properties, respectively, should only be taken as an approximation, to then as swiftly as possible revert to supposedly sound grammatical grounds.’ (my translation)

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99

Fernald (2000: 4–5), Kratzer (1995: 125–126), or Milsark (1974: 212–213), while the common sentiment appears to be that deciding “whether a state is ‘transient’ or ‘stable’ is sometimes difficult, for the notions involved are vague. Nonetheless, we seem to be able to settle the issue in most cases” (Chiercha 1995: 177). I believe, however, that there hardly is a viable modus operandi ready to hand – if we are to approach it, the temporariness problem as such can be considered from (at least) two perspectives (stated here as work procedures): i) define what is meant by (typical) transitoriness and (typical) permanence as a binary feature → assign the lexical items in question to the two classes derived thereby → apply the items of each class to the test criteria and check if they generate grammatical expressions ii) start out with the test criteria → check which ‘arbitrarily’ adjoined lexical items generate grammatical expressions in the pertinent environments → state their temporal properties and see what kind of classes emerge and/or whether at least a transitive pattern of the following kind holds: ‘if X and Y behave alike in W (e.g. are grammatical), while Z behaves differently from X/Y in W (in this case is ungrammatical), X and Y should clearly cluster together in terms of their typical temporariness features’ In search of a desired binary perspective, i) appears futile: there simply appears to be no clear cut-off point between temporary and permanent properties, but a context-based continuum at best.45 For obvious reasons, perspective ii) – or variants thereof – is the one usually applied within formal theories.46 Analogously to the different positions of how word classes in general are to be established, i.e. either based on notional or distributional grounds (see 1.1.), formal syntax/semantics tends to go down the distributional road. So, what is there to say about the temporal properties of the lexical items taken to exhibit the IL-SLcontrast? Limiting the discussion to a couple of selected adjectives, the distinction pre-theoretically and intuitively might appear straightforward. However, a multitude of problems arise: For example, most of the expressions in (115), and to a lesser degree (116), cannot easily be assigned prototypical durations but rely on further information provided by their arguments (or modified expressions); thus, they tend to manifest intra-expression variability. Moreover, even by keeping constant the argument or modified element, they display a fairly wide range 45 I am aware that I am essentially counteracting perspective i) here by only making use of expressions that have been defined as ILs by prior testing in test environments – staying true to the defined work procedure would be an unfeasible task, though. 46 As far as I can tell, the distinction is a virtually unknown concept within non-formal camps.

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of typical time spans for which they hold and differ as regards their change potential; thus, within the presumed class of (prototypical) ILs in (115), we find what we may term intra-class variability. While admittedly relying on introspection for the presented estimations in the following, the illustration of selected examples is fruitful as regards the exemplification of core challenges to the presumed basics of the IL/SL-distinction:47 (115)

a.

intelligent arguably holds for the lifetime of an individual and does not easily seem subject to change within individuals, in particular not as a volitional choice (there may be physical conditions – such as being a baby or demented – which do not easily allow for property ascriptions, though). However, what may in computer science have counted as an intelligent system in the 1970s, may well have been regarded as outdated and dumb by the 1980s – the system as such, in turn, certainly has not ceased to exist. The case of (one of) the adjective’s antonym (i.e., dumb) appears to behave in the exact same way.

b.

young crucially cannot be expected to hold for the lifetime of an individual. It picks out only a vague subpart of it and is clearly expected to be subject to change, yet only in the sense that the individual is sooner or later going to shed the property, not regain it. It is clearly contextdependent: a young man would arguably be considered as such for somewhere between the age of 15 and 40, a young kid somewhere between the age 3–10, while a young idea in philosophical or political circles may count as such for hundreds of years.48 The antonym old, in contrast, does by no means necessarily have to last over longer periods of an individual’s existence and is equally context-dependent, but crucially is likely to hold for the remainder of the existence of what the modified expression denotes.49

47 I do not see any harm in making use of attributive structures for presentation here mostly, as predicative use does not seem to differ in interpretation in essential ways for the illustrated expressions. 48 Thus, it seems perfectly acceptable to state i) in the year 2009: (i) “Capitalism as a conception of economic order is still a young idea, perhaps dating from 1776 when Adam Smith described its nature [. . .]” (Schramm 2009: 21) 49 In other words, it would be bizarre to assume that an old man would at some point in the future not be an old man any longer – in contrast, it seems safe to say that at whatever future time in its existence an old kid will have ceased to be an old kid, it will no longer be a kid, either.

Lexical aspect and temporariness

c.

101

married a culturally driven and obtained status, which may or may not hold for the remainder of an individual’s existence. It is thus potentially subject to change and may be shed and regained by volitional action on behalf of the individual.50 A similar case can be made for the expression’s antonym (lone or single), with the qualification that it is the cultural default case.

The adjectives in the preceding small selection (115) are obviously all argued to be ILs. As can be gathered, the encoded concepts differ on a variety of levels: i) ‘typical’ durations vary from the individual’s lifetime to properties that are taken as semi-definable chunks of time spans, which in principle can be fairly short; ii) they differ as regards licensing change, i.e., (re)gaining and/or (re)shedding the property in question; iii) conceivable intra-individual change can be either volitional (e.g. being married), subject to the ‘natural course of events’ (e.g. being young), or only possible on the basis of some form of external force (e.g. being intelligent, a property that could be lost due to severe illnesses or accidents); iv) intuitive time spans appear intricately entangled with the intensions of the modified expressions and seem approachable on this basis only. So, how do adjectival items from the SL class fare when the same criteria are applied? Again, a short selection of (prototypical) expressions is used (116): (116)

a.

drunk typically of short duration, i.e., hours or possibly days. It is subject to change, which can be brought about volitionally almost at will (neglecting alcoholism). The antonym case, in turn, is more difficult to evaluate than for married above – if drunk is considered SL due to its inherent transitoriness (as well as its typical behavior in the diagnostics), what are we to say about sober? Simplifying, it will have to occupy all the time intervals in between the states of an individual’s drunkenness, which – apart from alcoholics – will be significantly larger than the intervals of drunkenness. Applying standard diagnostics, however, it appears to pass most of the SLtests drunk passes (yet not necessarily all of them51).

50 Britney Spears famously had once been married for 55 hours only and remarried afterwards ( [accessed January 2013]) 51 For example, unlike drunk, sober appears odd in existential sentences.

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b.

sick arguably typically of (slightly) longer duration than drunk, with an indeterminate passage to chronical sickness. While a sick child will commonly be taken – depending on the sickness – to be well again after a couple of hours, days, or weeks, being the sick man of Europe can easily span decades.52 Being sick is subject to change, yet, ‘gaining’ the property is unlikely to be characterized as a volitional act. The antonym (i.e., healthy) appears to behave as sober does in the case of drunk.

c.

open fairly indeterminate as concerns duration. While it may be odd, yet fully conceivable, for a window to be open for years, it certainly is not for a hotel – both of which can also be open for very short durations, with the ascription of oddness to the cases reversed.53 Being open, at least for these two expressions, may not be the result of volitional action by the entities denoted by the arguments (i.e. hotel and window), yet seems to entail such action from a third party. While in (116a/b) the respective antonyms could well be considered the default cases, this does not seem to hold true for closed – the latter appears to be as non-distinctive as regards its prototypical duration and similar with respect to volitional implementation when juxtaposed to open.

52 Thus, it seems perfectly fine to characterize the UK as sick for years in i): (i) “Throughout the 1970s, the United Kingdom was sometimes called the “sick man of Europe” by critics of its government at home.” ( [accessed January 2013]) The item may be considered problematic, however, as it is one of the prime examples described as lexically ambiguous between SL and IL (cf. e.g. Carlson 1980: 107) and may be considered semi-lexicalized in its use in i). 53 It seems fully acceptable to utter both i) and ii): (i) The cellar window has been open for years as advised but it makes the cellar and the kitchen above very cold in winter and the dryer hose was poking out of the window which was a bit shoddy. ( [accessed January 2013]) (ii) A multistory hotel has been open for years now, just an hour’s walk from base camp. . . ( [accessed January 2013])

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As in (115), we again find substantial intra-item as well as intra-class variability. The expressions in (116) all display a high degree of context- and noun-dependency and ‘typical’ durations can be argued to differ considerably. Abstracting away from the question of how easily we can draw (hazy) inferences about temporal persistence given some predicate in a given sentence in a certain context of utterance – in thus far, Chiercha (1995: 177) may well be right that we should be “able to settle the issue in most cases” –, the lexical basis of the distinction appears doubtful. Are we, for example, going to include two lexical entries for open, one IL and one SL, to cover the difference between the likely durations to which the property holds for an open window and an open hotel? Also, if ILs are in fact characterized by the default inference that temporal persistence applies (cf. Marín 2010; McNally 1994), and if IL vs SL “cannot be a distinction that is made in the lexicon of a language once and for all” (Kratzer 1995: 125–126), are we to expect a gradual change for the expression married from IL to SL, given that a country such as Germany nowadays has a divorce to marriage ratio of ~50% as opposed to the 1960s’ ratios of ~10%? The general lack of systematicity when applying temporariness as a predictor appears troublesome. Even more so in combination with the many cases for which coercion has been argued to be at play as well as the possibly necessary inflation of the mental lexicon with polysemes used to account for expressions’ variable behavior. In questionnaire study I in 3.4., alongside the possible agentivestative-alternation of evaluative adjectives, a second group of expressions will be employed that may be argued to display polysemy straddling the boundary between IL and SL. The following subchapter maps some of the adjective typologies introduced in ch.1 to the distinction at hand.

2.3 What kind of adjectives are typical SLs? Ch.1 has introduced a range of different typologies proposed in the literature to capture the adjective class. As it turns out, the distribution of adjectives along the lines of SL and IL is insofar interestingly uniform as we apparently find a very close link between absolute adjectives in the sense of Kennedy & McNally (2005) and typical SL-adjectives. A common explanation recently pursued is based on the possible connection between adjectives and event structure (in particular, verbal bases, and derived adjectives), the scales presumably shared by bases and their derivatives, and, alternatively, a construed difference between intra-individual and intra-population variance (cf. Husband 2012; Kennedy & McNally 2005; Toledo & Sassoon 2011). Given the unclear status of intersectivity and subsectivity (see 1.2.2.3.), I will confine the following discussion to relative,

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absolute, and non-gradable quality (see 1.2.2.4.) as well as relational adjectives (see 1.2.2.1. and 1.2.2.3.).

2.3.1 Typical SLs are absolute gradable adjectives In (117), a naturally incomplete list of typical SL-adjectives is compiled: (117) TYPICAL SL-ADJECTIVES tired, happy, drunk, sober, sick, healthy, hungry, empty, full, naked, wet, dry, dirty, clean, closed, angry etc. RELATIONAL ADJECTIVES

Unsurprisingly, we do not find any relational adjectives among the expressions argued to be SLs and the reasons appear straightforward on distributional grounds as well as the semantics of relational adjectives. The IL-SL-divide is primarily argued to be one among predicates: given the at least heavily constrained, if not outright banned (see 1.2.2.3.), predicative use of relational adjectives, they consequently elude virtually all of the grammatical environments in which the distinction is argued to pop up. Moreover, their inherent classificatory character has been argued to make them kind-level modifiers. QUALITY ADJECTIVES

The adjectives in (117) are all exclusively absolute gradable adjectives. In the Kennedy-McNally-style degree-based system, all of them map their degrees to closed scales and allow for a range of different degree modifiers depending on scale type, e.g. closed in The door is fully/half closed (see the discussion in 1.2.2.4., in particular the scale representations in (62)). Moreover, all three types of closed scales are represented – for example, full/empty map to a totally closed scale, wet and dirty to lower-closed ones, and dry and clean to upperclosed ones. Also, many participles are absolute gradable adjectives in certain uses, as are the better part of English deverbals on -able/-ible (and German equivalents on -bar/-abel), some of which have been shown to be sensitive to, in particular, subject effects and the generic-existential reading alternation. However, this does not allow for a one-to-one mapping. For example, color and shape adjectives are usually argued to cluster among absolute gradables (cf. Kennedy 2007; Kennedy & McNally 2010), yet tend to be regarded fairly typical ILs. The same holds for expressions such as pure, impure, transparent, opaque etc. In contrast, relative adjectives are not among the typical SL-adjectives. In other words, open scales, assumed to be part of the lexical representation of

What kind of adjectives are typical SLs?

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dimension and evaluative adjectives, seem closely connected to IL-readings (or rather object-level in Carlson’s sense). As a matter of fact, this observation holds as long as evaluatives are treated as IL-expressions, irrespective of their agentive readings in certain constructions, an assumption made by the majority of authors; see 2.2.1.2. The situation seems different, and fairly blurred, for proper non-gradable adjectives (in the respective senses, obviously). For example, married has been used throughout this chapter as a posterboy IL-adjective and we can transfer the classification to, e.g., carnivorous or foreign. Yet, there are also items such as pregnant as well as the large class of participles out of which many are typically short-lived ascriptions. For example, the past participles locked and suspended certainly pass the majority of SL-diagnostics. Also, the better part of present participles derived from activity verbs are stage-level expressions, such as singing in the singing children or dancing in the dancing girl.54

2.3.2 Conjectures on the (partial) absolute-SL-coincidence SCALE STRUCTURE

~

EVENT STRUCTURE

Kennedy & McNally (2005) explicitly argue for a rough mapping of relative interpretations to time-stability, on the one hand, and absolute interpretations to transitoriness, on the other. Evidence comes from adjectives such as dry that are claimed to exhibit both uses – with the relative sense applicable to permanent and the absolute one to temporary states of dryness. Its relative use is exemplified by the entailment pattern in (118a) as well as acceptability of the relative-modifying very in (118b), while its absolute use is illustrated by dint of the respective ‘-examples (examples adapted from ibid.: 370–371 to suit the patterns used in 1.2.2.4.): (118)

a.

This region of the country is drier than that one. ⊭ Region 1/2 is (not) dry.

a.’

The glasses are drier than the plates. ⊨ The plates are not dry.

b.

This region of the country is very dry.

b.’

?The

glasses are very dry.

54 Obviously, the diagnostics described in 2.1.1. do not readily lend themselves to present participles. While in English, the delimitation to the progressive form is blurred, German present participles do not occur predicatively except for lexicalized forms such as bedeutend ‘important’ or erfrischend ‘refreshing’.

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The conflation of the absolute-relative- and the IL-SL-distinctions is traced back in Kennedy & McNally (2005) to the, at least, close connection between absolute adjectives and verbs. In particular, the event structure of the base verbs underlying participle adjectives – which the article mainly deals with – is claimed to inform the adjective’s scale structure as well as the (in)admissibility of certain degree modifiers. The question is obviously of interest, given that the ontological grounding of the SL-IL-debate primarily concerns the availability of event arguments. This is also the route suggested by Kennedy (2007: 40), who argues the split within the class of absolute adjective between SLs and ILs to be one of their respective correspondence, or lack thereof, to verbal structures. Thus, full/empty are stage-level in their positive form and directly correlate to filling/emptying events of an incremental theme (see below). In contrast, it is argued that absolute IL-adjectives such as opaque/transparent do not have direct verbal (?opacify/?transparentize) correlates, explaining their IL-behavior. Without going into details here,55 the general proposal put forth makes the prediction that telic verbs map their adjectival derivatives to totally closed sales, while atelic verbs map to partially closed scales. Moreover, for accomplishment verbs, it is claimed that minimum and maximum absolute standards of deverbal adjectives are set depending on the kind of argument the adjective takes – if the argument is an incremental theme (cf. e.g. Krifka 1998)56 in the underlying event, the adjective will have a maximum standard, if not, it will have a minimum standard. Kennedy (2007: 38–40) illustrates the point by dint of the participle loaded, which is claimed to show the non-contradictoriness of the subordinate clause when the participle is predicated of a goal argument in subject position in (119a), while the subordinate clause is contradictory with its incremental theme in subject position in (119b) (examples adopted from ibid: 39):57 (119)

a.

The truck is loaded with boxes, but half of it remains empty.

b.

?The

boxes are loaded on the truck, but half of them are still on the dock.

55 To concretely retrace the proposal, a full-fledged theory of verbal aktionsart would have to be introduced, which is outside this study’s scope. See in particular Kennedy & McNally (2005: §5). 56 The idea of incremental themes roughly maps the affectedness of, or change in, an argument in terms of succession corresponding to the progress of the event as such. 57 I will not go into the unclear question whether the sentences in (119) are (stative) passive constructions or copula plus adjectives proper.

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Furthermore, as claimed by Hay et al. (1999), it is scalar structure that determines whether degree achievements exhibit telicity or not. Thus, tests for subinterval properties appear to show that the open scale underlying (120a) (the scale the relative adjective wide maps on) leads to atelic readings, while the closed scale underlying (120b) (the scale the absolute adjective full maps on) to telic ones: (120)

a.

Tim is widening the hole.

⊨ Tim has widened the hole.

b.

Tim is filling the tank.

⊭ Tim has filled the tank.

c.

Tim is straightening the line.

⊭ Tim has straightened the line.

d.

Tim is purifying the enzymes.

⊭ Tim has purified the enzymes.

Following the general reasoning, absolute SL-adjectives as in (120b) are thus ‘endstates’ of eventive structures, while relative ones do not allow for this inference. However, (120c) shows that a shape adjective such as straight (not a typical SL-, yet absolute adjective) displays the same entailment pattern.58 (120d) additionally calls into question that an absolute IL-adjective, pure here, is not ‘related to an event’ in the same way SL-adjectives are. Also, as pointed out by, among others, Husband (2012: 123–125) (see also Kennedy & Levin 2008), scale structure is not a sufficient predictor for (a)telic interpretations of degree interpretations. Based on examples such as the ones in (121) – derived from open scales and thus unexpectedly not behaving in accordance with (120a) –, Husband argues for a more pronounced role of the respective argument: (121)

a.

Kim is lowering the blind.

⊭ Kim has lowered the blind.

b.

The tailor is lengthening my pants.

⊭ He has lengthened my pants.

Husband, in turn, attempts at unifying these observations via his claim that the difference between quantized and homogenous structures is at the heart of a variety of seemingly unrelated phenomena. Crucial for his approach is that he regards scale structures not as part of an adjective’s (or verb’s) lexical representation, but only derivable structurally and, most importantly, via an expression’s argument(s).59 58 That is, in case we do not want to say that straight is stage-level in the example – which would, I believe, once more illustrate the ease with which expressions are capable of changing type / coercing. 59 In a nutshell, Husband argues quantization, i.e. the existence of specified quantities realized by a nominal argument (i.e. all DPs except for mass nouns and bare plurals) to be responsible for telic vs atelic interpretations, the derivation of open vs closed scales, as well as IL- vs SLreadings. The latter in his theory is meant to capture also bare plural subject effects.

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While the connection between telicity and scale structure is therefore not quite clear, a more fundamental question for the subject at hand concerns the relation between absolute adjectives and verbs. The SL-adjectives in (117) are not all deverbal and even the ones that clearly are (tired, drunk, and closed)60 are at least to a substantial degree lexicalized. The relationship between wet, dry, and clean and their respective verbal counterparts is one of conversion, the directionality of which is notoriously tricky, while standard diagnostics (cf. e.g. Plag 2003: 108–111) appear to speak in favor of adjective → verb conversion rather than vice versa. The situation for many of these expressions’ counterparts in German is even clearer: unlike their English equivalents, at least voll ‘full’, leer ‘empty’, müde ‘tired’, nass ‘wet’, trocken ‘dry’, sauber ‘clean’ are all monomorphemic, while it is their verbal counterparts that are derived from them (e.g. füllen ‘to fill’, ermüden ‘to tire’, säubern ‘to clean’). While it seems evident that the core class of SL-adjectives is made up of absolutes, their analysis as endstates of events appears less straightforward (in particular as opposed to participles): is the state of any object that counts as clean necessarily the result of a cleaning event?61 More problematic even appears the case of naked, for which no transparent verbal counterpart is at hand. WITHIN AND BETWEEN INDIVIDUAL VARIANCE

An alternative to the mapping of scale and event structures is proposed by Toledo & Sassoon (2011) and Sassoon & Toledo (in prep.) by means of distinguishing between two kinds of variance – within and between individuals. The approach is based on Kennedy & McNally’s introduced in 1.2.2.4., yet crucially differs from it in that it takes any adjective to be interpreted against some comparison magnitude. In this vein, the difference between absolute and relative adjectives boils down to the question of which comparison class they pick out – for relatives, comparison is carried out extensionally with other individuals, while for absolute adjectives, it is provided by a set of counterparts of the individual the adjective is predicated of itself. Thus, the idea entails that for adjectives in positive form, the “description of a shirt as dirty or clean is based on a visualization of that particular shirt in various degrees of grubbiness rather than on its juxtaposition with other concrete shirts” (Toledo & Sassoon 2011: 141). These counterparts of the same individual, making up the comparison class, are taken as possible stages of the individual that presently do not hold. In contrast, the index of evaluation in extensional-category comparison classes makes reference to distinct individuals, i.e. whether a shirt counts as small or 60 Etymologically, naked is also deverbal – a relation which, however, no longer is transparent. 61 Similar questions may be asked for naked, sick, or healthy.

Chapter summary

109

large will depend on juxtaposing it with other shirts (and possibly other objects as well).62 While not making use of underlying event structures, temporariness is argued to feature as the core semantic force behind the comparison class that is picked out. Given that, according to Toledo & Sassoon, it is possible states the same individual could potentially be but is not in, i.e. stages, that fuel the comparison class of absolute adjectives, these adjectives are typically transitory in nature and properties such as full, dirty, or clean are “manifested at different levels on different occasions” (ibid.: 151). In turn, an extensional category comparison class is claimed to be characterized by time-stable properties that “remain relatively constant over time and across situations, but vary between individuals in a population” (ibid.). Obviously, the problems touched upon in the preceding section, viz. absolute IL-adjectives such as pure/impure or shape and color adjectives, are not trivially accounted for by the approach, either. Yet, it appears to offer a fairly neat, and in a way intuitive reformulation – but arguably not more – of what the IL-SL-contrast is taken to boil down to (at least for adjectival predicates in their positive form): individual-level is intrapopulation comparison – stage-level, then, is intra-individual comparison.

2.4 Chapter summary Putting particular emphasis on adjectives, this chapter has recapitulated the cornerstones of what is often presumed as a core grammatical distinction between two classes of predicates: stage- and individual-level. It has been argued that temporariness, the central, yet nebulous foundation of the distinction, does not easily carry over to the divide as a whole. First, the standard diagnostics for the distinction have been introduced, particularly drawing attention to the substantial number of counterexamples, which have shown that i) none of them are applicable to all elements of either the SL- or IL-class and ii) that context in many cases can override expected behavior. Thus, as pointed out by, for example, Fernald (2000) or Jäger (2001) (although culminating in different bottom lines), SL and IL cannot be conceptualized as a single phenomenon. If taken for granted in the first place, the distinction has to unite diverse phenomena under one roof. For example, the core class of SL-adjectives does not show the possible existential readings expected for bare plural subjects, while many of them feature felicitously in perception reports. In contrast, the deverbal modal adjectives visible and available show just the reverse behavior. 62 See ibid.: §2.3. for the concrete implementation of how the two comparison classes map to minimum, maximum, or midpoint standards.

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After very briefly sketching some of the prominent theoretical approaches, sortal and argument structural in nature, adjectives have been shown to be aspectually quintessentially stative, with the possible exception of agentive readings of evaluatives in certain constructions. The subsequent explorative discussion into the extent to which temporariness is an appropriate indicator for two possible kinds of states, bounded vs unbounded or transient vs stable, has argued that a variety of factors appear to be at play, in particular the ‘change potential’ of the argument an adjective is predicated of with respect to the property encoded by the adjective. Depending on the argument, adjectives will thus display variable typical durations, which holds for ILs as well as SLs. Corroborating the general skepticism as most pronouncedly put forth by Maienborn (2003), the general ease with which IL-expressions are claimed to coerce in SL-contexts and/or the necessity for a fair amount of polysemous or variable items arguably substantiates the doubts concerning the distinction’s explanatory power. Also, the status of an adjective’s antonym has been argued to be unclear, in particular of typically short-lived SL-properties as in the pair drunk-sober. While, overall, the distinction appears flawed, an interesting mapping to the adjective classes of the Kennedy-McNally-style adjective typology has been attested: Typical SL-adjectives are absolute gradable ones. Finally, two possible conjectures to the partial absolute-SL coincidence have been introduced: The mapping of event-structure and scale structure, which is claimed to neatly establish the link between adjectives and event arguments and an approach that argues the SL-IL-divide to essentially inform the comparison class against which adjectives are evaluated. The factum that SL-adjectives are absolutes will crucially inform the corpus-study reported on as well as the general factors argued to drive order restrictions on prenominal adjectives in ch.3.

Chapter 3

Adjective order restrictions, adjective classes, and property concepts in DP As has been shown in ch.2, the general dichotomy of the two predicate classes individual-level and stage-level appears to be a fairly callow one. Its ontological foundation is obscured by the seemingly evident notions of temporariness and permanence, which on closer inspection do not easily allow for establishing two distinct classes, but rather appear to form a continuum of time-stability. The conclusion has been that many of the diagnostics applied to the IL-SLdivide lose in significance as grammatical phenomena when embedded in larger or different contexts and are driven by world-knowledge or pragmatics rather than core semantics. Intended as a reflection of the major lines of the debate (despite the focus on adjectives), ch.2 largely echoes the same bias – most of the research conducted in the field concentrates on predicative structures (including secondary predication). However, temporariness in general as well as IL-vs-SL in particular also feature in theories dealing with attribution; and most pertinently so in accounts investigating into the order of adnominal adjectives. The common sentiment or general agreement in this regard, spanning research from various schools and frameworks, is the following deliberate overstatement: (122) The general sentiment Adjectives (as well as other kinds of adnominal modifiers) encoding temporary property concepts occur farther from the noun they modify than adjectives encoding enduring properties. For certain constructions, this assumption has been modeled from formal syntactic perspectives with concrete reference to IL and SL (cf. e.g. Cinque 2010; Larson 1998; Larson & Takahashi 2007; Ramaglia 2011) and finds its more general counterpart in considerations from descriptively oriented perspectives that make use of the notions temporariness and alterability reminiscent of the distinction (cf. e.g. Eichinger 1992; 1993; Eroms 2000; Posner 1980). While evidently not all the quotations and remarks below concern the exact same kinds of data or constructions, they all directly relate to questions of adjective order and illustrate the sentiment formulated in (122):

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Adjective order restrictions, adjective classes, and property concepts in DP

»The generalization thus seems to be that enduring property modifiers must occur closer to N than temporary property modifiers« (Larson & Takahashi 2007: 110) »The two readings available prenominally in English [i.e., among others, IL and SL; S.K.] can in fact co-occur, and when they do they are strictly ordered [. . .] stage-level > individuallevel > N.« (Cinque 2010: 19) »Temporäre Qualifikationen scheinen vor inhärenten zu stehen.«1 (Eroms 2000: 271) »Ganz klar ist das Beispiel [einen betrunkenen jungen Mann; S.K.]: „Alter“ ist eine Kategorie, die durchgehend bei Lebewesen eine wichtige Kategorisierungsrolle spielt. [. . .] Dagegen ist die zweite [. . .] gewählte Qualifikation wesentlich akzidentieller, auch zeitlich beschränkter, wenn auch von erheblicher praktischer Bedeutung. Auch für [auf einem leeren weiten Platz; S.K.] würde man wohl ähnlich argumentieren. Die spezielle Art von Größe, die mit weit angesprochen wird, ist geradezu ein Definiens eines ordentlichen Platzes, das ebenfalls wesentlich leichter änderbare Attribut der mangelnden Gefülltheit hat hier zweifellos die Funktion, die Wirkung der Signalisierung von ‚Weite‘ noch zu steigern.«2 (Eichinger 1992: 322) »Wir können also als [eine] semantische Regel der Attributstellung formulieren: Größere Unveränderlichkeit des Bezeichneten drückt sich aus in größerer Substantivnähe.«3 (Posner 1980: 72)

As abovementioned, the authors just quoted do not in all cases have the same kinds of expressions in mind, nor do they assign the same grammatical significance to their claims. For example, Eichinger and Eroms have in mind preferences of adjective placement and restrict their claims to, roughly, what has been called quality adjectives in ch.1. While not restricted to quality adjectives, this chapter will largely focus on them. On the other hand, Larson & Takahashi as well as Cinque relate their claims to more particular structures such as the one in (123a), for which it is argued that adjective senses (or readings) are concretely 1 ‘Temporary qualifications appear to occur ahead of inherent ones.’ [my translation] 2 ‘The example a drunk young man is entirely obvious: “Age” is a category that is persistently important for categorizing animate beings. In contrast, the second chosen qualification is by far more accidental, also temporally more limited, albeit of immense practical significance. One would probably argue similarly for on an empty wide square. The particular kind of size addressed by wide is a downright definiens of a proper square, the also more easily alterable attribute of a lack of filledness doubtlessly has the function of increasing the impact of width.’ [my translation] 3 ‘Thus, we can formulate a semantic rule of attribute order: A higher degree of non-alterability of the denoted is embodied by closer proximity to nouns.’ [my translation]

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related to the IL-SL-distinction, while certain distribution patterns allow for disambiguation and rigid orders of SL outside of IL. Larson (1998), for example, pronouncedly advocates the idea that a generic quantifier in the sense of Chiercha (1995), see 2.1.2.2., is at play in the example below, taking scope over the IL-, but not the SL-adjective and thus ensuring the only possible distribution of the two senses indicated in (123) (example adapted from Larson 1998: 155): (123)

a.

The visibleSL visibleIL stars include Capella. → intrinsically visibleIL stars that happen to be visibleSL at a certain time/place or momentarily

Thus, an investigation into these diverse yet related claims calls for more general considerations of the structure of DPs as well as adjective order restrictions (AOR) in particular. In particular, I will put some flesh to the bone as regards the nature of AORs in order to disentangle the potential bearing of temporariness (or possible stage-level expressions) on them. The picture to unfold in this as well as the next chapter is a fairly negative one in light of the general sentiment in (122) and the syntactic rigidity of AORs. It can be subsumed as follows: – AORs can only be understood if some form of layered partitioning of DPs is taken into account – the questions at hand primarily concern the center as well as the right edge of DP and have to be subdivided into a classificatory layer, in close proximity to the nominal head, as well as a qualitative layer dominating it – AORs in the narrow sense are found within the qualitative layer and are by far less laid down than oftentimes assumed in the formal literature – they appear to find their basis rather in a general cognitive scale than in discrete semantic classes – Adjectives considered to be of the SL-kind (cf. ch.2) behave inconspicuously within this layer, in that they follow more general principles – There is, however, a crucial bipartition if two (or more) adjectives span the intersection between the qualitative and the classificatory layers – adjectives in the classificatory layer apply to kinds rather than individuals (or, alternatively, types rather than tokens, but crucially on kind- and not object-level), which thus accounts for some of the data underlying the sentiment The chapter is structured as follows: 3.1. reviews several proposals as to the location of (multiple) attributive adjectives within the DP, essentially following the configuration found in Sternefeld (2008). As will be argued in the discussion to follow, however, adjective order is a by far less reliable indicator regarding specific proposals for or against the structural position of quality adjectives.

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AORs, from a variety of perspectives, are discussed in 3.2. – the scope of investigation as well as a variety of basic assumptions are introduced in 3.2.1., while 3.2.2. argues against very fine-grained orders in the sense of directly encoded syntactic restrictions. 3.3. reports on a 20–item corpus search that aims to establish the position of ‘typical’ SL-adjectives within multiple prenominal adjective sequences, while 3.4. introduces a questionnaire-study on adjective order exploiting polysemous expressions that appear to lend themselves to the IL-SL-contrast. Finally, 3.5 concludes.

3.1 Quality adjectives and DP structure The reanalysis of the traditional NP as a DP is nowadays almost universally accepted among researchers in the generative tradition. Following Abney (1987), (lexical) NPs are headed by a functional element DET, which in particular allows for structurally reading off the parallels between the verbal (sentential) – headed by an IP/TP or CP (Inflectional/Tense Phrases or Complementizer Phrases, respectively) – and the nominal domains (for an overview of motivations of the DPhypothesis see e.g. Alexiadou et al. 2007; for arguments regarding German cf. e.g. Olsen 1991; Sternefeld 2008). A common assumption in this regard includes that only DPs can be arguments and refer, not NPs on their own, which have no inherent reference (cf. Adger 2003; Carlson 2003). In languages such as German and English, in which the canonical position of adjectives in attributive use is prenominal, adjectives appear in between the DET and the N-elements they modify. Moreover, the part of Greenberg’s Universal 20 (cf. Greenberg 1963) referring to prenominal word order remains virtually unchallenged (cf. among others Cinque 2005; Rijkhoff 2002): »Universal 20. When any or all of the items (demonstrative, numeral, and descriptive adjective) precede the noun, they are always found in that order. [. . .]«4 (Greenberg 1963: 87)

Extending the observations to adnominal modifiers in general, this also holds for the relative order of attributive adjectives and relative clauses, with the former being realized closer to the head noun than the latter as a quasi-absolute universal (cf. e.g. the ‘principle of head proximity’ in Rijkhoff 2002: 298–299). 4 The universal continues: “If they follow, the order is either the same or its exact opposite.” Apparently, this claim regarding postnominal word order is less uncontroversial, but does not essentially inform the argument of this study (cf., for example, Cinque 2005 for different landing sites of moved Ns (mostly in Romance languages) to account for attested postnominal orders and Bouchard 2002 for an in-situ approach).

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Regarding the more concrete structural location of attributive adjectives, arguments in favor of virtually any available position in between D and N (for primarily prenominal languages) have been and still are being brought forth in the literature. Disregarding the possible (syntactic) equivalence of demonstratives and DETs as well as the notoriously difficult question whether numerals can be subsumed under the adjective class, I will follow Sternefeld’s (2008: 243– 245) notation in (124b), based on inflectional feature-checking mechanisms,5 as the basic structure for a German DP as in (124a) – comprising an article (DET), an attributive (quality) adjective, and a noun: (124)

a.

ein schönes Auto ‘a nice car’

b.

Here, adjectives are merged as full APs in the specifier-position (Spec) of a dedicated functional projection AgrDP (agreement determiner phrase). This projection, viz. AgrDP, is introduced to account for the inflectional behavior of the complete DP and establishes agreement in phi- (NUMBER , PERSON , GENDER ) and CASE -features between D, AP, and NP as well as accounts for agreement of weak and strong inflectional paradigms between D and AP (cf. Gallmann 1996, Sternefeld 2008). Being a functional projection, its head is not necessarily filled with lexical material. Following Sternefeld’s assumptions, quality adjectives are thus typically DP-modifiers and structurally located in higher positions than the NP proper. At least for German and if a feature-driven syntax is assumed, such structural configurations are appear preferable to mere adjunction-based approaches – 5 Here and throughout this study, I will neglect feature specifications and checking information in tree representations. While certainly crucial for the justification of structures such as (124b), they do not inform the general points being made on adjective order. See, for example, Adger (2003) and Sternefeld (2008) for general feature-checking frameworks.

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with APs as adjuncts to either NP or N’ as illustrated in the bracketing structures in (125a/b). The same holds for (125c), which assumes an nP-projection motivated by the distribution of agentive arguments within DP6 (for a general comparison of different theoretical approaches to the syntax of adnominal modification within generative grammar see Pysz 2006). (125) a. ADJECTIVES AS NP-ADJUNCTS (cf. Jackendoff 1977;7 Svenonius 1994) [DP [D’ [D ein [NP [NP [AP schönes]] [N’ [N Auto]]]]]] b. ADJECTIVES AS N’-ADJUNCTS (cf. the discussion in Ramaglia 2011: 45–47) [DP [D’ [D ein [NP [N’ [N’ [AP schönes]] [N Auto]]]]]] c. ADJECTIVES AS ADJOINED TO nP (cf. e.g. Adger 2003: 275–278) [DP [D’ [D ein [nP [AP schönes] [nP [n’ [NP [N’ [N Auto]]]]]]]]] Sternefeld (2008: ch.2.8) dismisses adjunction-based configurations such as (125) on grounds of the necessary checking relations between determiners, head nouns, and all intervening material, i.e. primarily adjectives (see also e.g. Cinque 1994 and Laenzlinger 2005 on Italian and French, respectively). With NPs as complements to D, as in (125a/b), the determiner could only see the N-head, whose inflectional morphology is independent of an adjective’s as regards the weakstrong dichotomy of German adjectives, see (126). (126)

a.

ein a

schönes beautifulS T R O N G

Auto car

b.

das the

schöne beautifulW E AK

Auto car

In other words, the weak-strong dichotomy, being independent of the head noun (unlike phi-features), is a relation between DETs and adjectives, and only fairly liberal assumptions about the checking mechanisms at the phrasal periphery could account for weak-strong-congruency between DETs and APs in adjunctionbased approaches (cf. the critique in Sternefeld 2008: ch.2.8.). The structure in (124) also appears preferable to accounts such as (127) that take APs as complements to D and, in turn, NPs as complements to A: 6 In particular on grounds of agentive PPs, but also of agentive interpretations of (mostly ethnic) adjectives with deverbal head nouns and the mapping the verbal and nominal domains (cf. e.g. the discussions in Adger 2003: 266–275 or Arsenijević et al. 2014). As this study’s focus lies on object nouns, the motivation for nP will be neglected. 7 Given the year of publication, Jackendoff (1977) obviously does not treat such structures as DPs, but assumes three bar-levels in his version of X’-syntax.

Quality adjectives and DP structure

(127)

ADJECTIVES AS HEADS

117

(cf. e.g. Abney 1987: ch.3)

(127) is Abney’s (1987) original proposal, in which the adjective functions as the head and the NP as its complement – crucially, the AP then needs to inherit certain features of the head noun to allow for its essentially nominal distribution (and thus calls for a non-intuitive reconceptualization8 of headed structures). Furthermore, a presumably major advantage of analyzing adjectives as heads becomes void once several languages other than English are taken into consideration. Abney (1987: 208–209) takes the ban of prenominal English APs with complements (128a/b) and the reverse behavior (i.e., at least a clear tendency to take complements) in postnominal position (128c/d) as a strong indication that the head analysis must be on the right track. Taking “head”-NPs as complements, there is no structural position for the natural complement of (potentially 2–place) adjectives such full (of sth.) or proud (of so.). (128)

a.

a (*of bananas) full (*of bananas) truck

b.

a (*of his son) proud (*of his son) father

c.

a truck full *(of bananas)

d.

a father proud *(of his son)

e.

ein mit Bananen voller Laster

‘a truck full of bananas’

f.

ein auf seinen Sohn stolzer Vater

‘a father proud of his son’

Yet, as the German data in (128e/f) show, this line of analysis is inadequate if transferred to languages that allow prenominal adjectival complements. While postnominal adjectives also have to be accompanied obligatorily by comple8 In fact, Abney conceptualizes adjectives as ‘defective nouns’ lacking a single feature [+substantive], which they inherit once they take an NP as complement – thus, he ensures their nominal distribution (cf. Abney 1987: 209).

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ments9 (this is a rare phenomenon in German and the adjective does not inflect then, which is in line with the AgrDP-analysis in (124) above; cf. ein Laster voll mit Bananen), adjectival complements are not banned prenominally in German (neither are they in various other languages such as Bulgarian or Modern Greek; see Cinque 2005; Ramaglia 2011) and can smoothly be integrated once APs are taken to merge as maximal projections in Spec-position (but see, for example, Bhatt (1990: ch.4) for an extension of Abney’s framework to capture complements of A0). Moreover, the SpecFP-approach is often argued to find theoretical justification precisely in the kinds of data this chapter deals with (cf. e.g. Cinque 1994): prenominal (adjectival) modification is an iterable, stackable, or recursively10 embeddable process. Thus, in numerous languages, among them English and German, we find sequences of prenominal adjectives (this is not to say that the analyses in (125) and (127) were incapable of accounting for multiple adnominal modification – in fact, for adjunction approaches this is argued to count among their major strengths; see Svenonius 1994). Thus, the basic structure assumed in this study is illustrated in (129b) (for the example in (129a)). It is reasonably close to the syntactic surface, allows for the necessary checking relations (both for the weak-strong-paradigm as well as phi- and case-features), provides natural positions for Adj-complements (given that the adjectives are merged as phrasal projections in Spec-AgrDP), and accounts for possible multiple attributive adjectives: (129) a. ein schönes kleines Auto ‘a nice little car’ b.

9 The restriction does not hold for appositive use; see 1.1.2. 10 The notions iterability, stackability, and recursivity are not necessarily tantamount (for some discussion, see e.g. Kotowski & Härtl 2011; Scott 2002). I will remain agnostic to these distinctions in this study.

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This chapter will largely be restricted to quality adjectives structurally located in between D and NP, while ch.4 will remark on possible NP-modification. However, nothing can be read off from (129) as regards the possible orders of the two adjectives. Uttered with flat intonation, i.e. without contrastive stress on either adjective, and without an intonational pause between them, the majority of speakers consider (130a) the unmarked variant and (130b) at least slightly marked or degraded: (130)

a.

ein schönes kleines Auto

b.

?ein

kleines schönes Auto

Applying the same prosodic restrictions, the combinations of two adjectives in (131) elicit even stronger effects. These arguably lean to ungrammaticality rather than mere markedness in the ’-examples, as the majority of my informants have affirmed: (131)

a.

ein schönes rotes Auto

a.’

?/*ein

b.

ein kleines rotes Auto

b.’

?/*ein

c.

ein reizendes französisches Kind

c.’

*ein französisches reizendes Kind

d.

ein großer runder Tisch

d.’

?/*ein

‘a nice red car’

rotes schönes Auto ‘a little red car’

rotes kleines Auto ‘a lovely French child’ ‘a large round table’

runder großer Tisch

Such adjective order restrictions (AOR) have been a field of study for quite some time, from a number of angles and different frameworks – yet, they remain illunderstood on a variety of levels. Most generally, it is unclear what the exact nature of AORs actually is. Are they a matter of core syntax? After all, these are word order phenomena and several generative authors have thus sought answers to this end. And, following up, how laid down are they in fact? Rigidness of orders obviously is a crucial factor in assessing their grammatical status and the more flexibility order allows, the more likely it is that their motivation is driven by frequency and use rather than core syntax. And, arguably underlying either kind of approach, what is their semantic or conceptual basis and can we establish classes – of whatever kind – that may inform apparent orders?

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Adjective order restrictions, adjective classes, and property concepts in DP

3.2 Adjective order restrictions According to the Duden (2005: 348–349), adjective order is a matter of preference, driven by semantic classes, and follows the serialization pattern in (132). It understands the adjective class in a broad sense (see 1.2.2.1), collapsing a variety of expressions under the heading Zahladjektiv ‘number adjective’ to include numerals and quantifiers: (132)

AORS ACCORDING TO THE DUDEN (A) number adjectives (e.g. zwei ‘two’, viele ‘many’, verschiedene ‘various’ etc.) > (B)11

relational adjectives pertaining to temporal or local relations (e.g. heutig ‘today’s’, linke ‘left, äußere ‘outer’ etc.)

> (C)

qualifying adjectives (e.g. groß ‘big’, mangelhaft ‘defective’, blau ‘blue’ etc.)

> (D)

relational adjectives pertaining to material composition (e.g. silbern ‘silverAdj’, ledern ‘leatherAdj’ etc.

> (E)

relational adjectives pertaining to origin / affiliation to certain realms (e.g. französisch ‘French’, bayrisch ‘Bavarian’, schulisch ‘schoolAdj’ etc.)

Minor differences aside, the Duden’s serialization pattern is largely echoed by authors from descriptive and functional traditions, language-specifically for German (cf. e.g. Eichinger 1987; 1992; Engel 1991: 634–637; Eroms 2000: 267–271; Schmidt 2006; Sommerfeld 1971; Trost 2006: ch.22; Zifonun et al. 1997: 2070– 2071), for English (cf. e.g. Bache 1978; Bache & Davidsen-Nielsen 1997; Payne & Huddleston 2002), and cross-linguistically (see in particular Rijkhoff 2002; 2010). Moreover, these approaches by general consensus assume a pluricentric configuration, along which adjectival modifiers are ordered. The usual tripartition into three distinct, pragmatic-semantically motivated modificational zones is illustrated in (133a) following Eichinger’s (1992) influential model for German, 11 Here and throughout, ‘>’ or ‘>>’ will be used as an indicator for left-to-right precedence of an adjective or one adjective class relative to another – given that I am (largely) dealing with German and English prenominal adjective sequences only, ‘>’ is tantamount to decreasing distance to the head noun.

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which subdivides attributive adjectives into Artikelklassifikatoren ‘article classifiers’, Qualificativa ‘qualifiers’, and Nominalklassifikatoren ‘noun classifiers’. These three zones are claimed to have primarily referential-situating, qualifying, and classifying functions, respectively, and to be ordered in this sequence from left to right within the German DP12; see (133b) ((133a) adapted from Eichinger 1992: 327; my translations): (133) a. MODIFICATION ZONES ACCORDING TO EICHINGER (1992) article article classifiers

qualifiers

noun classifiers noun

quanti- referential evalua- qualita- descrip- classifiers adjectives tives tives tives fiers b. GENERAL TRIPARTITION INTO LAYERS /ZONES referential/situating >> qualifying >> classifying Mapped to the Duden’s serialization model in (132), Eichinger’s article classifiers include classes (A) and (B), the qualifiers the better part of (C), and the noun classifiers (D) and (E).13 The most prototypical adjectives (see 1.1.2.) are thus to be found in the qualifier zone. Cross-linguistically, Rijkhoff (2002; 2010) proposes a similar, slightly more coarse-grained model intended to capture all languages in his sample (cf. Rijkhoff 2002: 5–10), which claims universal applicability and thus also includes postnominal adjectival modification. The model illustrates that – cross-linguistically – order restrictions within noun phrases / DPs can best be thought of in terms of head proximity (i.e. the nominal head, not the D-head), with types of modifier classes enclosing the head noun rather than being serialized in a strict sense. (134) depicts Rijkhoff’s layered modification14 representation (adapted from Rijkhoff 2010: 102):

12 Obviously not conceived of as a DP in the grammar traditions referred to here. 13 Eichinger’s model somewhat deviates from this neat mapping procedure, as his ‘descriptives’ include shape as well as color adjectives, which are thus shifted into the classifier zone. 14 Note that Rijkhoff takes functional discourse grammar as his basis and understands modification very broadly, including functional elements such as determiners and numerals as well as lexical attributive modifiers such as APs, PPs, and relative clauses. I will not go into detail as regards expressions and modification patterns he assumes to show up in the different (outer) layers (but see Rijkhoff 2002: chs.4–6), as the discussion will be confined to what translates to his inner two modification layers as well as apply to adjectives only.

122 (134)

Adjective order restrictions, adjective classes, and property concepts in DP

LAYERED MODIFICATION CROSS - LINGUISTICALLY

The discussion in this chapter will largely be confined to the core layers in Rijkhoff’s model (qualifying and classifying modification) and the center as well as right edge of the zones assumed in (133). Moreover, as the brief enumeration of (adjectival) expressions in 2.3.1. shows, the SL-IL-contrast is taken to present itself first and foremost in items from the qualifying layer, viz. quality adjectives – therefore, the focus will be put on these. Given the complexities and diversity of AORs, the scope of investigation will have to be even further restricted (see the next section).

3.2.1 Preliminaries and scope of investigation COMMA INTONATION , RESTRICTIVITY, WEIGHT,

and ‘CONCEP TUAL ICONICITY ’ As noted by various authors (cf. e.g. Scott 2002; Sproat & Shih 1988; 1991; Vendler 1968), AORs apply most strongly in constructions in which the adjectives are not set apart as individual intonational phrases. This is illustrated by the acceptability differences between the pairs of examples in (131). Thus, it is oftentimes claimed that prosodic pauses between two prenominal adjectives allow for more freedom with regard to possible orders, as in (135). As a mere short-cut, given the presumably possible mapping of phonological gaps in spoken and commas in written language, this phenomenon is often called ‘comma intonation’. (135)

a.

ein rotes, schönes Auto

(as opposed to (131a’))

b.

ein runder, großer Tisch

(as opposed to (131d’))

The issue is a delicate one, however, and some combinations of adjectives appear better suited to feature in variable orders than others. Thus, Sproat & Shih’s

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(1988: 477–478) claims regarding the acceptability of (136a) are at least dubious. While the authors argue that the sentence “seems felicitous with appropriate intonation, here indicated by commas” (ibid.), most of my native informants consider the English example in (136a) at least marked in comparison to (136b). Sproat & Shih’s assessment appears partly valid, though, given that (136a) is judged better across the board than (136c), in which an unexpected order does not come along with comma intonation:15 (136)

a.

?She

b.

She loves all those wonderful, orange, Oriental ivories. [unmarked order; comma intonation]

c.

*She loves all those Oriental orange wonderful ivories. [marked order; no comma intonation]

loves all those Oriental, orange, wonderful ivories. [rated good by Sproat & Shih 1988]

Thus, while comma intonation can cancel AORs to a certain degree, it does not allow for just any conceivable word order to the same degree. Moreover, against a common view in the literature (cf. e.g. Zifonun et al. 1997), comma intonation cannot be equated one-to-one with non-restrictive modification in all cases. Consider, for example, the following internet advertisement (137), in which the placer is looking for a dancing partner: (137)

Ich suche einen netten, großen, ehrgeizigen Tanzpartner, der Lust und Zeit hat mit mir sowohl Latein HGR B als auch Standard zu trainieren, um erfolgreich Turniere zu tanzen.16 ‘I am looking for a kind, tall, ambitious dancing partner, who has got the time and feels like practicing Latin as well as Ballroom with me in order to succeed in competition dances.’

In the only conceivable reading, not just the most salient one, the person who put up (137) does not look for just any dancing partner, but one from a more specific subset of potential dancing partners, i.e. the set〚kind〛∩〚tall〛∩ 15 The problem may well be one of polysemy, again. Oriental has two uses, an ethnic/relational as well as a quality use – given the restrictions on relational adjectives discussed at various places in this study, its secondary use may allow for more freedom. 16 [accessed Dec 2014]

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〚ambitious〛∩〚dancing partner〛.17 Nonetheless, this very reading allows for comma intonation. In other words, comma intonation (or placing commas in written language), is not a sufficient criterion for non-restrictivity, while at the same time restrictive modification with multiple adjectives does not inevitably call for flat, uninterrupted intonation (cf. also Adam & Schecker 2011: 159). In turn, non-restrictive readings are typically accompanied by deaccentuation of the modifier (cf. Umbach 2006: 153). The date in (137) can also be called upon for the discussion of a further, ceteris-paribus factor time and again argued to be at play for AORs: morphophonological weight. Going back to the works of Behaghel (1909)18 and, way earlier even, Pāṇini (‘Pāṇini’s law’, cf. Cooper & Ross 1975), many authors claim that – everything else being equal – morpho- and phonologically longer or weightier expressions / constituents / phrases tend to follow shorter ones in coordinated as well as stacked constructions. While the “everything-else-being-equal”-part obviously begs the question, for AORs the hypothesis essentially entails that if two adjectives are in principle interchangeable, the weightier adjective follows the less weighty ones. Thus, in German prenominal adjective sequences, weight is argued to function as a predictor for preferred sequences, so that weightier adjectives are encoded in closer proximity to the head noun than less weighty ones. This could, for example, also be drawn upon for the very sequence found in (137), with ehrgeizig being longer than both nett and groß (for claims and principles along these lines, see among others Cooper & Ross 1975; Eichinger 1992; Rijkhoff 2002; Trost 2006; Vendler 1968). While not taken up from a theoretical perspective, weight as a factor will be statistically analyzed in the corpus study in 3.3. Finally, many authors draw upon a second of Behaghel’s (1909) laws,19 roughly stating a rule of thumb of semantic or conceptual iconicity. Unlike weight, this ‘law’ is obviously difficult to pin down, let alone formalizable, but is in particular made use of by authors who are critical of fixed, fine-grained AORs to explain variability in (quality) adjective order depending on a given head noun (cf. e.g. Bouchard 2002; 2011; Eichinger 1992; Trost 2006). For example, the Eichinger quote in the introduction to this chapter is telling in this respect: Among other things (i.e. the accidentalness of the property denoted by drunk), it is argued that age is an important category via which we categorize animate 17 As it does not alter the general point being made, I am neglecting here the possibly invalid intersective analysis of at least ambitious and dancing partner; see 1.2.2.3. 18 Cf. his ‘Gesetz der wachsenden Glieder’, i.e. the ‘law of increasing terms’; my translation. 19 Cf. his first law (Erstes Behaghelsches Gesetz), which roughly says that the conceptually closely related also occurs in close proximity.

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beings, which made age adjectives occur close to person nouns. Hence, this features as one ingredient of an explanation why betrunkener junger Mann ‘drunk young man’ appears more natural in this order than the reverse (which, in fact, would be expected given the weight criterion if drunk and young are assigned otherwise equal status). Bouchard captures iconic conceptuality by a »general principle of seriation of adjectives The more the property expressed by an adjective makes it likely to form with the noun a relevant and usual Concept [sic], the more this adjective tends to be close to the noun, i.e., to modify the noun more directly than another adjective.«20 (Bouchard 2011: n.p.)

In ch.4, I will try to elucidate some of the intricacies brought along by the notion of ‘concept’ as used by Bouchard (which he attributes to Krifka 1995) – in particular as it relates to kinds. In general, iconicity understood along these lines entails strong tendencies for inherent property concepts, which are likely permanent, to be realized in closer proximity to a given noun. Yet, given its flexibility, it should equally be capable of capturing high frequency combinations including temporary/SL-adjectives such as müdes Kind ‘tired child’. DIRECT VS INDIRECT MODIFICATION

‘Indirect modification’ has been coined by Sproat & Shih (1988), originally referring to one of two distinct adnominal modification strategies in Chinese, with related constructions found in a number of other languages. In Chinese, prenominal adjectives can occur either bare or with the particle –de, which is also used as a relative clause and a possessive marker. Used as bare modifiers, the number of adjectives within one DP is restricted and AORs do apply (138), while neither quantity confinements nor AORs apply when accompanied by –de (139). For the former case, Sproat & Shih introduce the term ‘direct modification’, for the latter ‘indirect modification’ (examples adopted from Sproat & Shih 1988: 465–466): (138)

DIRECT MODIFICATION

a.

xiao lu hua-ping

~‘small green vase’

a.’

*lu xiao hua-ping

~‘green small vase’

b.

hao yuan pan-zi

~‘nice round plate’

b.’

*yuan hao pan-zi

~‘round nice plate’

20 In its strongest form, the principle should also capture lexicalized phrases underlying lexical integrity; see 4.1.2.

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INDIRECT MODIFICATION

a.

xiao-de lu-de hua-ping

~‘small green vase’

a.’

lu-de xiao-de hua-ping

~‘green small vase’

b.

hao-de yuan-de pan-zi

~‘nice round plate’

b.’

yuan-de hao-de pan-zi

~‘round nice plate’

The pattern is found, in different shapes, in other languages that either allow or obligatorily call for intervening material in between attributive adjectives, with such material essentially suspending AORs. Hetzron (1978: 173–175), for example, presents data for several languages of this kind, all of which show similar liberalness as regards adjective order, yet mark adjectives sequences by functional elements: Somali is not subject to AORs but at the same time canonically marks adjective sequences by the conjunction oo ‘and’. In Kurdish definite DPs with multiple adjectives, every element is marked with a short form of the definite article –a ‘theS H OR T ’ and the complete construction is succeeded by the article’s full form –aka ‘the’, while in indefinite DPs, adjectives are obligatorily set apart by conjunctive u ‘and’. Again, in both cases material intervenes and AORs do not apply. Modern Hebrew and spoken Arabic illustrate similar tendencies due to polydefinite DPs (cf. ibid.), as do certain constructions in Modern Greek with multiple definite determiners (cf. Alexiadou et al. 2007: PART III ch.1.6). Given its unclear status – either as a mere phonological phenomenon or a syntactic reflex of information structure along the lines of givenness (cf. Krifka 2007) – and, more importantly, lack of a concrete analog in either German or English, I will largely neglect indirect modification in the sense of Sproat & Shih in this chapter. However, the opposition direct vs indirect has been taken up, significantly extended, and detached from surface structures by a variety of authors (cf. Cinque 2010; Larson 1999; Larson & Takahashi 2007). This extended make-up and its concrete conflation with IL and SL will be discussed in ch.4. PARALLEL VS HIERARCHICAL MODIFICATION AND FOCAL STRESS

The core difference between modificational templates is usually captured by the two notions of ‘parallel’ and ‘hierarchical modification’. Parallel modification as in (140) is applied to structures in which the adjectives appear to modify their head independently of each other, i.e. without recourse to subsets established locally by A+N-clusters – these phenomena are oftentimes accompanied by comma intonation and/or overt conjunctions. Hierarchical modification as in (141) corresponds to those cases, in which an adjective modifies the complex set established by A+N-clusters (or clusters of several adjectives and a noun),

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with the modifier farther away from the head taking scope over the ones in closer proximity to the head, recursively specifying reference (cf. e.g. Cinque 2010; Scott 2002; Sproat & Shih 1988; 1991). (140)

PARALLEL MODIFICATION (also coordinating, broken, or asyndetic) Schema: [A + A + A + N] Peter loves Bonzo, his [cute, big, fluffy pet dog].

(141)

HIERARCHICAL MODIFICATION (also subordinating or unbroken) Schema: [A + [A + [A + N]]] Peter went to the pet shop looking for a [cute [big [ fluffy pet dog]]].

The discussion here will largely be restricted to cases of hierarchical modification and only occasionally draw upon data from apparently parallel structures. In particular, overtly coordinated structures with, for example and, but, or or in between adjectives will only be touched peripherally. Consequently, distributive DPs like (142) that refer to different individuals – i.e. the head N in conjunction with one or the other adjective refers to separate entities – fall out, as these cannot occur without conjunctions setting them apart:21 (142)

DISTRIBUTIVE DP

a.

Auf dem Gipfel treffen sich japanische und amerikanische Regierungsvertreter. ‘At the summit, Japanese and American government representatives meet.’

b.

Das Urteil beruhte auf falscher, unklarer oder nicht eindeutiger Evidenz.22 ‘The verdict was based on false, vague, or inconclusive evidence.’

A further prosodic caveat concerns non-distributive structures. A well-known phenomenon via which AORs can be systematically circumvented is focus stress (cf. e.g. Cinque 1994: 95; Sproat & Shih 1988: 470–471; Teodorescu 2006). Most adjectives bearing focal stress can be fronted and thus render otherwise marked structures (more) acceptable. Reconsidering the data in (131), the ’-examples all

21 Distributive DPs display a variety of features that set them apart from non-distributive ones. For a descriptive account of such structures in English, see e.g. Bache (1978). 22 This example is distributive upon at least one possible reading, in which the three adjectives introduce three distinct pieces of evidence.

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clearly gain in acceptability when the first adjective is focused, while maintaining hierarchical (and restrictive) structures (143). A possible prerequisite for such prosodically accented sequences, however, appears to be discourse-presence of the inner adjective-noun-cluster, as in pre-established sets functioning as ad-hoc classes, or due to necessary corrective focus (e.g. comprehension failures). Thus, for example, usage of (143a) below appears odd outside of discourse contexts in which beautiful cars have been introduced and can informationstructurally be used as a (local) topic or in answers to comprehension questions such as Was für ein schönes Auto hast Du gekauft? ‘what kind of beautiful car have you bought?’: (143)

a.

ein ROTES schönes Auto23

b.

ein ROTES kleines Auto

c.

ein FRANZÖSISCHES reizendes Kind

d.

ein RUNDER großer Tisch

AORS IN THE NARROW SENSE AND TRUTH - CONDITIONAL RELEVANCE Moreover, AORs come in two basic flavors. The first one concerns preferred orders of multiple intersective adjectives. For example (143b) (on the assumption that modification with〚red〛as well as〚small〛can in fact be interpreted intersectively, see 1.2.2.3.), is basically a conjunction of three predicates. Following Heim & Kratzer (1998), Partee (1995), and others, intersection has the commutative property, i.e. the sequence of operations should not affect the outcome and the commutativity of conjunction leads to logical tautologies of the kind (A ∧ B) ↔ (B ∧ A). Thus, limiting the example to the possible variations in adjective order, kleines rotes Auto is representable in either of the two ways in (144a/b), which, in turn, predicts the reverse order rotes kleines Auto to yield the same denotation if we keep the respective senses of the two adjectives constant, i.e. neglect possible cases of polysemy: (144) 〚kleines rotes Auto〛 a. =〚klein〛∩〚rot〛∩〚Auto〛 b.

=〚rot〛∩〚klein〛∩〚Auto〛

= λx [SMALL(x) ∧ RED(x) ∧ CAR(x)]

23 Here and throughout the remainder, I am using capitalization of whole lexical items to indicate focal stress, although the stress patterns of complex or multisyllabic words may well be more intricate (e.g., in (143c), representing französisches as franZÖschiches / fran’zösisches would be more adequate).

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In a way, that is also what follows in terms of interpretation from permutations of this kind: There is no clear-cut difference between how kleines rotes Auto and rotes kleines Auto should be interpreted, with the seemingly straightforward answer that we are either dealing with a red car that is small or a small car that is red merely begging the question. If, however, the latter expression is uttered with neither comma intonation nor focal stress on rot, rotes kleines Auto is clearly degraded. I will call this kind of restriction, viz. cases that apparently are not based on truth-conditional differences between reversed orders, ‘AORs in the narrow sense’. The second kind of AORs is different in nature. Consider the cases in (145) (the c-pair is a literal translation from Svenonius’s 1994 original example in English): (145)

a.

der falsche neue Geldschein

‘the counterfeit new banknote’

a.’

der neue falsche Geldschein

‘the new counterfeit banknote’

b.

traditional industrial design

b.’

industrial traditional design

c.

ein gefährliches totes Tier

‘a dangerous dead animal’

c.’

ein totes gefährliches Tier

‘a dead dangerous animal’

These pairs differ from the above examples in that the denotations of the respective complex expressions are clearly set apart, i.e. the respective pairs are truthconditionally distinct – the easily accessible differences in interpretation go hand in hand with fairly comparable acceptability ratings: neither of (145a–c) are prima facie better or worse than (145a’–c’), respectively. In their salient readings, however, it seems safe to claim that (145a) is a counterfeit exemplar of a recently issued banknote, while (145a’) is likely to be interpreted as a new version of a counterfeit bill. Similarly, left-to-right scope relations of the two relational adjectives in (145b/b’) appear to directly account for semantic disparity: we are apparently either dealing with a certain kind of industrial design, namely some traditional technique or version thereof, or some sort of industrially manufactured traditional design. Crucially, the adjectives featuring here are not of the kinds that allow for intersective modification patterns: new is an intensional modifier, fake is a modal/privative, traditional and industrial are relational adjectives,24 which have been shown to not straightforwardly allow for predicate 24 At least in the readings intended here – both, but in particular traditional, also have quality polysemes.

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modification (see 1.2.1.). The pair in (145c/c’) appears more tricky, given that dead and dangerous may be claimed to feature intersectively – yet, elude AORs of the kind at play in (131) – and little inherent to them suggests they should take scope over the adjective immediately following them. The respective interpretations, however, point to just that: a dead animal that is dangerous – possibly by virtue of being dead, i.e. decaying, spreading germs etc. – in (145c) and a dangerous animal that happens to be dead – e.g. a beast of prey commonly taken to be a menace also to humans – in (145c’). AOR may well be a misnomer for this latter sort of word order data. In principle, they show that the NP-head contained within a DP takes interpretative primacy over its modifiers, which are recalibrated in terms of their meaning contribution relative to the nominal head. This is suggested in Partee’s (1995) ‘Head Primacy Principle’, whose necessity she illustrates via the following examples (adopted from Partee 1995: 332): (146)

a.

Bobo is a giant and a midget.

b.

Bobo is a midget giant.

c.

Bobo is a giant midget.

Assuming Partee is right in that midget in (146b) and giant in (146c) are both adjectives premodifying nouns,25 the respective interpretational forces are the same for these two examples. While (146a) appears outright contradictory and only resolvable by assigning either giant or midget a metaphorical or other secondary reading, the two modifier-head structures allow for more easily accessible (and uncontroversial) interpretations: Bobo being unusually small for a giant or unusually large for a midget, respectively. Partee’s Head Primacy Principle is instructive in this regard and appears transferable to most contextdependent A-N-clusters introduced in 1.2.2.2., which have been argued to take – outside of strong contexts suggesting otherwise – the head noun as their primary source of information as regards the necessary reference magnitude:26

25 There are various other lexical items in English that can feature as modifiers and whose origin is clearly nominal, such as fun or key. Their status as adjectives, however, is oftentimes far less clear, so that we may well be dealing with compounds here (Morzycki in prep: 53, for example, considers them ‘attributive nouns’ for, however, not quite convincing reasons). Having said that, these questions are outside the scope of this book and will largely be neglected. 26 Head necessarily refers to the nominal head in N0 here – Partee does not assume a DP heading an NP.

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(147) head primacy principle (see Partee 1995: 334) In a modifier-head structure, the head is interpreted relative to the context of the whole constituent, and the modifier is interpreted relative to the local context created from the former context by the interpretation of the head Hierarchical modification, then, can be regarded as an extension of the Head Primacy Principle, in that premodifying adjectives in shell-like27 fashion, as in (145), extend the local context inverse to linearization in languages with canonically prenominal attributive adjectives. We may thus formulate the following extended principle for hierarchical modification patterns with multiple adjectives: (148) extended head primacy principle In multiple hierarchical modifier-head structures of the kind [An-. . .A2-A1HEAD], the head is interpreted relative to the context of the whole constituent, modifier A1 is interpreted relative to the local context created from the former context by the interpretation of the head, A2 is interpreted relative to the local context created from the former context by the interpretation of the head and A1, etc. Accounting for scope relations and ensuing interpretations, this principle neatly suits the examples in (145), with the salient reading necessitating that the adjective farther away from the head takes scope over the following A1 and the head. Again, some of these structures will be of major interest in ch.4 and their discussion will be postponed. While Partee’s original principle (147) is also necessary for examples like small red car, i.e. at least small and arguably also red will typically find their comparison classes in the head noun, the notion of scope for such putatively intersective modification structures is less straightforward. I will deal with these AORs in the narrow sense and the potential bearing of temporariness on them in the remainder of this chapter.

3.2.2 AORs in the narrow sense As a skeletal structure, a variety of studies have cross-linguistically carved out AORs in the narrow sense for languages with large and open adjective classes in fairly robust agreement (cf. among several others Cinque 1994; Dixon 1982; 27 ‘Shell’ is used theory-neutrally, here, and no commitment regarding DP- or NP-shells is intended at this point.

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Scott 2002; Seiler 1978; Sproat & Shih 1988; 1991). All of these studies point out the applicability restrictions – in particular prosodic in nature – described in the preceding section, and accordingly abstract away from them; viz. AORs in the narrow sense only apply in a pre-defined sub-group of possible modification constructions. In Sproat & Shih’s words, AORs “are limited, cross-linguistically, to instances of non-parallel [i.e. hierarchical; S.K.] direct modification” (Sproat & Shih 1988: 479). Crucially, the universal perspectives adopted in these studies avail themselves largely of quite fine-grained lexical-semantic classes in the shape of concrete property classes, which is a suspiciously uncommon strategy for authors working in formally-oriented frameworks as illustrated in ch.1 (holding for all of the authors in Tab.2 with the exceptions of Dixon and Seiler). The following table illustrates some of the proposed clines:28 Table 2: Different proposals for universal AORs with hierarchical clines of property concepts itemized by author(s). proposed hierarchies

author(s)

Value > Dimension > Physical property > Speed > Human Propensity > Age > Color

Dixon (1982)

(Reinforcing Adverbs > Quantifiers > Demonstrative Pronouns > Article/Possessives > Anaphoric Participles >) Affective Adjectives > Evaluating Adjectives > Color Adjectives (> Material Adjectives)

Seiler (1978)

Quality > Size > Shape > Color (> Provenance)

Sproat & Shih (1988; 1991)

(Possessive > Cardinal > Ordinal >) Quality > Size > Shape > Color (> Nationality)

Cinque (1994)

(Determiner > Ordinal Number > Cardinal Number >) Subjective Comment > ?Evidential > Size > Length > Height > Speed > ?Depth > Width > Weight > Temperature > ?Wetness > Age > Shape > Color > (Nationality/Origin > Material > Compound Element)

Scott (2002)

(Quantity >) Quality > Size > Form > Color (> Nation)

Laenzlinger (2005)

Quality > Size > Temporal Adjectives > Shape > Color (> Thematic Adjectives > Classificatory Adjectives)

Ramaglia (2011)

28 Certain elements/classes to the far left and/or right in some proposals have been parenthesized (e.g. determiners, demonstratives, numerals, or ‘compound elements’ and classifying adjectives etc.), as they either do not clearly (or definitely do not) pertain to the adjectives under consideration here or will be dealt with later. Roughly, the non-parenthesized classes correspond to all quality adjectives.

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Note that the non-parenthesized classes – brackets are my modifications – relate to the quality adjectives introduced in ch.1, mappable to subsective (and/or vague) and intersective adjectives as well as relative and absolute ones. Tellingly, the authors show little agreement as regards the inclusion of material and ethnic (or Ramaglia’s thematic / classificatory) adjectives. Thus, the above proposals evidently vary to different degrees. Differences concern the scope of investigation: for example, Dixon’s (1982) interest in only those elements that relate to semantic types typically encoded as adjectives (see 1.1.1.) as opposed to Scott’s (2002) hierarchy of elements as diverse as determiners and compound elements. Also, the splitting and categorization tendencies with respect to individual classes set them apart: for example, Seiler’s (1978) subdivision of ‘affective’ and ‘evaluative adjectives’ as opposed to Cinque’s (1994) and Sproat & Shih’s (1988) classifications of ‘quality’ and ‘size’. As will become clear below, however, these splitting-vs-lumping debates seem somewhat futile from a purely grammatical perspective anyway. While Hetzron’s (1978: 166) assessment that the finding of roughly identical relative orders of adjectives provides “a very interesting insight into how mankind classifies properties attributed to entities” is certainly accurate, the paramount question for a linguistic theory has to be in how far and to which degree the clines in Tab.2 are reflected grammatically. In contrast to Dixon (1982) and Seiler (1978), Sproat & Shih (1988) assume, albeit reluctantly, that their hierarchy in combination with the mentioned phonological confinements must be a matter of universal grammar (UG). Many generative grammarians follow this assumption, as is reflected, for example, in the pertinent chapters in Alexiadou et al. (2007: PART III ch.1.3). The assumption is also, without much further ado, picked up by Cinque (1994; 2010), Laenzlinger (2005), Ramaglia (2011), and Scott (2002), with the welcomed effect that “conjectures as to the psycholinguistic motivation for AOR need not be posed: AOR fall out as a direct consequence of UG” (Scott 2002: 97). The details and differences of the approaches’ basic assumptions aside,29 their common denominator is the embracement of functional projections (FPs) within DP directly read off from (one or the other of) the clines in Tab.2 above. Broadly based on the tenets of cartography (for overviews, see e.g. Cinque & Rizzi 2008; Shlonsky 2010), APs are thought of as being merged in Specpositions of dedicated functional heads encoding concrete property concepts. 29 For example, Cinque (1994; 2010) assumes the majority of core adjectives to be moved into adnominal positions from reduced relative clauses (or remain there, as e.g. English postnominal adjectives; see also ch.4), while Scott (2002) and Ramaglia (2011) assume adnominal base generation for them. The concrete differences between the approaches, however, are not relevant here, as I will argue below that their general commonalities ought to be dismissed.

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Crucially, these FPs are considered a feature of UG, positionally fixed within the order of DP projections, and limited in their number. In other words, these projections are always present in all languages with productive adjective classes (whether filled or not), the non-marked order of adjectives must directly follow the order of the FPs, and there are no structural positions for adjectives to occur in other than the ones provided by the FPs’ specifiers. Transferring the Sternefeld-style structure in (129) to this reasoning, the nature of AgrDP-projections remains similar from a structural perspective, yet they are filled with concrete lexical-semantic information. Thus, for example, Scott (2002) builds on Cinque’s (1999) presumed cline of adverbial projections in IP and – referring to the structural uniformity of IP and DP – provides the structure in (149b) for the DP in (149a) (the tree is essentially Scott’s 2002: 106, with the only modification being the symbols for empty categories; note that all functional projections not represented in the tree are left out merely for matters of clarity – Scott expects them to be present nonetheless, as is indicated by the inclusion of the empty SizeP): (149) a. that really cool long red dress b.

In contrast, non-canonical hierarchical structures are taken to rely on peculiar stress contours. Thus, data such as the DPs in (143) are taken to be acceptable only with focal stress on the fronted adjective, which in turn is argued to have necessarily moved out of the specifier of its dedicated functional projection to a Focus-projection (FocusP) higher up the tree. While assuming a FocusP is not

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necessarily restricted to the projectional approach depicted here, it is a necessary ingredient for any approach availing itself of fine-grained FPs (for general arguments in favor of FocusP, among other left peripheral projections in DP, see Rizzi 1997). For example, the phrase in (143a), repeated as (150a) here, would receive the reduced bracketing structure in (150b), with indices, arrows, and traces (‘t’) indicating movement / fronting. The example is based on Scott’s (2002: 113) elaborations: (150)

a.

ein ROTES schönes Auto

b.

[DP ein [FocusP rotesj [SpecSubj.CommentP schönes [SpecColorP tj [NP Auto]]]]]

In quintessentially the same fashion, structural configurations similar to the one in (149) can be found in Cinque (1994: 95–96), Laenzlinger (2005: 653), or Ramaglia (2011: 196). As argued for such structures, a supposed strength of the cartographic approach can directly be gathered from the tree in (149). They can, for example, straightforwardly do justice to cases of polysemy: cool is obviously used in one of its secondary senses here (~‘fashionable’ or ‘excellent’), with the reasonable assumption that this sense has been derived from a base polyseme (~‘somewhat cold’). Given that this notional or conceptual shift at the same time constitutes a shift from one property class to another (e.g. in Seiler’s 1978 one from EVALUATING to AFFECTIVE ; in Scott’s (2002) one from TEMPERATURE to SUBJECTIVE COMMENT ), functional projections are taken as the fulfilment of the cartographic tenet of a strict correspondence between (base-generation-)position and interpretation (cf. Shlonsky 2010). While the cartographic treatment of multiple adnominal modification by means of concrete FPs appears elegant on the surface, the following two sections argue against it, both from an empirical and a psycholinguistic perspective. First, findings from psycho- as well as neurolinguistic studies are summarized, which do not clearly speak in favor of functional projections as presented in the above. Second, a closer look at some corpus data reveals that the approach undergenerates empirically in not accounting for a fairly wide variety of constructions. 3.2.2.1 Some psycholinguistic (counter)evidence READING TIME MEASURES

Hierarchical clines as in Tab.2 – and, in extension, their possible implementation(s) in syntactic structures as in (149) – also appear to find support from psycholinguistic studies investigating into the semantic and syntactic processing

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Adjective order restrictions, adjective classes, and property concepts in DP

of DP-structure. For example, Kennison (2010) reports on two reading time (RT) experiments employing what she calls ‘preferred adjective orders’ and ‘adjective order violations’ in English.30 The first experiment employs adjectives of the semantic classes SIZE and COLOR , which are claimed to be rigidly ordered along the lines of Tab.2. Test subjects are asked to self-paced-read sentences, within which DPs featuring two hierarchically modifying adjectives are embedded in verbal CP-complements in the two conditions ‘preferred’ and ‘violation’, as in (151a) and (151b), respectively. (151)

a.

PREFERRED

John said that the big red balloon was the most expensive one. b.

VIOLATION

John said that the red big balloon was the most expensive one. The second experiment’s set-up is the same, with the only modification being that not SIZE but GENERAL DESCRIPTION adjectives (a relatively non-distinct group featuring items such as pretty, old, or wild whose clustering as a class remains implicit; see Kennison 2010: 150–152) are juxtaposed to the COLOR class. In both experiments, RTs are significantly longer on the second adjective as well as on the head noun in the violation condition as compared to the preferred condition. Kennison’s conclusion is twofold and relates to, on the one hand, a grammatical perspective as well as a related claim on general processing mechanisms. First, on her account, adjective classes and the order restrictions they are subject to are real. Second, processing of prenominal adjectives is essentially incremental, i.e. interpretation happens on the spot without delaying it until the head noun has been encountered. This is interesting insofar as it, at least superficially, runs counter the head primacy principle (147) (and its extension (148)) as well as the general view set out in ch.1 that the compositional semantics of attributive modification in the vast majority of cases is head-noundependent. At the same time, enhanced RTs on the head nouns in the violation condition provide support for possible reanalysis of the complete DP after its full establishment. Kennison’s (2010) results are thus also in line with processing studies employing single attributive adjectives and their incremental interpretation prior to exposure to the head; see for example Sedivy et al. (1999); Eberhard et al. (1995). 30 Note that Kennison (2010) does not make any claims regarding universality or a particular syntactic theory. The terminology in ‘preferred adjective order’ clearly alludes to her stance, though, i.e. it is unlikely that she regards AORs as fixed and universally determined or written into the syntax.

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ERP-MEASURES AND BEHAVIORAL STUDIES At least partially comparable results are presented in a series of studies on English AORs with healthy as well as brain-damaged test subjects by Kemmerer et al. (2007) and Kemmerer et al. (2009); see also Kemmerer (2000). Kemmerer et al. (2007) model a scale of property concepts underlying AORs taken over from Bache & Davidsen-Nielsen’s (1997) textbook31 – here, VALUE > SIZE > DIMENSION > PHYSICAL PROPERTY > COLOR – and implement it from a construction grammar perspective (if I understand the theoretical background correctly; see in particular the illustration of the underlying framework in Kemmerer et al. 2009: 92–93). They report on a mixed acceptability-rating / event-related brain potential (ERP) experiment, for which the general applicability of the above cline is supported by a pilot rating study asking for the naturalness of AAN-phrases on a scale from 1 (=very bad) to 5 (=very good). An extract of these phrases (in total, the authors used the 50 AANs that yielded the greatest rating differences for the actual study) is provided in Tab.3 below, adapted from Kemmerer et al. (2007: 241), with the mean ratings for individual items in brackets directly following the pertinent phrases and the mean ratings for the two conditions thereunder: Table 3: Examples from Kemmerer et al.’s (2007) rating study on AORs with concrete notional property classes. Mean ratings are provided in brackets after items; the means for all 50 test items (100 sentences in total over the two conditions) are indicated in the lowermost row. lexical-semantic class

expected order (mean)

Value + Size

A nice small cup (4.2)

A small nice cup (1.5)

Value + Dimension

A good high ceiling (3.9)

A high good ceiling (1.3)

Value + Physical property A nice hot dinner (4.5) Value + Color

order violation (mean)

A hot nice dinner (1.6)

A gorgeous purple butterfly (4.7) A purple gorgeous butterfly (1.3)

Size + Dimension

A big tall building (4.5)

A tall big building (1.7)

Size + Physical property

A small square rug (4.3)

A square small rug (1.4)

Size + Color

A huge gray elephant (4.6)

A gray huge elephant (1.3)

Dimension + Physical property

A long rough path (4.0)

A rough long path (1.6)

Dimension + Color

A thick blue towel (4.6)

A blue thick towel (1.6)

Physical property + Color

A soft brown sweater (4.7)

A brown soft sweater (1.4)

means of all 50 items

4.5

1.5

31 This cline corresponds to the order in Bache & Davidsen-Nielsen’s (1997) ‘descriptive zone’ which is linearized in their model in between the ‘specification’ and ‘classification zones’ and essentially includes all quality adjectives.

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The behavioral findings in Kemmerer et al.’s (2007) actual study are, however, less unequivocal than the designed stimuli in Tab.3 suggest. Only half of the participants reliably judged the expected order conditions as acceptable and the order violation condition as odd in test sentences of the kind [definite subject DP + past tense verb + indefinite direct object DP with two prenominal adjectives]. A third condition testing contradictory adjective sequences such as A woman saw a large small monkey. was reliably rated as odd. Thus, the authors decided to split participants into two groups for analysis, a high- and a low-sensitivity group, respectively (which makes assessing their results somewhat difficult). The general picture reported for ERPs, however, is as follows: As opposed to the expected order condition, both the violation and the contradiction conditions elicited a reduced N400 as well as an enhanced P600 measured on the second adjective (both reaching significance; for an overview of ERPbased effects and their possible interpretations, see e.g. Kuperberg 2013; Osterhout et al. 2008), which is the first position at which a possible violation can be detected. The major findings on the final noun were that in opposition to the expected order and order violation conditions, the contradiction condition evoked a significantly stronger N400, which also peaked significantly later. In the discussion of their data, Kemmerer et al. (2007) argue that the results corroborate their hypothesis of a semantic level at which adjectives are grouped together and which is grammatically relevant. This basic level is assumed to consist of the lexical-semantic classes in the left-hand column of Tab.3. AOR violations in this sense are taken as infringements of grammatical-semantic constraints, which need to be distinguished from purely lexical constraints giving rise to selectional restriction violations as in *the hungry table. While the explanatory power of ERPs as a language-specific tool is subject to general debates, N400s fairly robustly have been found as effects triggered by purely lexical semantic constraints, as in *The whale is a house.,32 whereas P600s are conventionally assumed to strongly correlate with syntactic anomalies as well as reanalysis phenomena. This latter effect is, for example, found in the processing of garden-path-sentences such as The horse raced past the barn fell. (in which the parser initially assigns a wrong syntactic structure to the input) or agreement errors like *The girl eat her sandwich (see e.g. Friederici 1997; Kuperberg 2013; Osterhout et al. 2008 for discussions of different effects). Yet, P600s have also been argued to occupy some middle-ground between what are oftentimes understood as two fairly independent processing streams, a semantic and a syntactic one. Kim & Osterhout (2005) report on what they 32 The underlined words in this sentence’s examples are the measuring points at which the respective anomalies occur (either onset- or coda-related).

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conceive of as a ‘semantic P600’ in (seemingly) passive sentences with selectionally appropriate subjects and verbs, in which the latter, however, fail to deliver the expected passive-marking; for example The mysterious crime had been solving. . . (as opposed to . . . solved). In this middle-ground spirit, Kemmerer et al. (2007) interpret their findings – and AORs in general – as instances of semantically driven constraints on word order, viz., a semantic syntax different in nature to syntax proper. The strong N400 on the head noun in the contradiction condition, in turn, is hypothesized to represent a core lexical semantic anomaly in the sense that, simplifying, objects denoted by the head nouns cannot at the same time possess two properties incompatible with each other. However, we need to bear in mind that Kemmerer et al.’s (2007) behavioral results are unexpected in light of their hypothesis, with half of their subjects not reliably rating the presented sequences in accordance with the proposed adjectival hierarchy. An ERP-study reported by Adam & Schecker (2011) on German adjective order sheds further doubt on the idea of a cognitively fixed sequence based on the adjectives’ lexical semantic classes. The AOR-hierarchy the authors assume is illustrated in (152) and represents a synthesis of a variety of proposed clines (some of which can be found in Tab.2; cf. Adam & Schecker 2011: 163– 164): (152) ARTICLE > NUMBER > REFERENTIAL > TIME /PLACE > AFFECTIVE /EVALUATING

>

DIMENSION

ORIGIN

>

>

AGE

>

FORM

>

COLOR

>

MATERIAL

>

CLASSIFICATION

>

NOUN

In a small-scale corpus study, the authors claim to have found a general tendency for the above cline; yet, they also report on a variety of counter-examples.33 A crucial claim in this respect relates to the kinds of deviations found: Thus, variability is significantly higher between neighboring classes; for example, we are more likely to find permutations of the kind DIMENSION > AFFECTIVE / EVALUATING than of the kind COLOR > AFFECTIVE /EVALUATING . The ERP-study used auditory stimuli, consisting of DPs in isolation read at a normal rate without any prosodic marking. Measuring point was the onset of the second adjective. The electrophysiological results appear to also tell a different story if contrasted to Kemmerer et al. (2007), both in terms of detected effects as well as the relevant stimuli. Thus, no significant difference is reported between the control (‘correct’ order) and the marked (reversed) orders if the two adjectives are from neigh33 Adam & Schecker’s (2011) presentation of their data is unfortunately fairly meager, so that it is oftentimes not totally clear what kinds of sequences they have in mind.

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Adjective order restrictions, adjective classes, and property concepts in DP

boring lexical classes; for example DIMENSION vs AGE or FORM vs COLOR . In contrast, the reversal of adjectives from two classes farther apart from each other in the hierarchy in (152) elicited two effects: an early LAN34 as well as a P600 and no N400–effect. Adam & Schecker interpret the LAN-effect as indicating a syntactic anomaly, roughly comparable to morpho-syntactic infringements, and the P600 as indicative of a reanalysis operation. On this view, the reversal of adjectives from two distant lexical semantic classes elicits effects reminiscent of the processing of garden-path-sentences, although it remains unclear in which way a ‘wrong’ structure could be assigned to a string on the basis of prenominal adjectives. Given their corpus data in combination with the ERP-findings, the author’s conclusion, then, is at the same time similar to and different from Kemmerer et al. (2007) and Kennison (2010): (i) there is some kind of semanticsfueled syntax and AORs are an instance thereof. (ii) the nature of AORs is better captured in terms of cognitive scales than in terms of discrete semantic classes, essentially abandoning the clearly partitioned scale in (152). FURTHER STUDIES A variety of older experimental studies also yield results that call for skepticism with respect to canonical let alone structurally fixed AORs. The designs make use of fairly diverse methods such as, to name just a few, facilitation / inhibition of object discrimination via adjective order and variable intonation (cf. Danks & Schwenk 1972; 1974), acceptability ratings based on word frequency as a possibly distinctive criterion for order preferences (cf. Ney 1983), or drawing and recollection studies to elicit the prominence of adjective meanings in dependence of order (cf. Sichelschmidt 1989). A note of caution is in order for these studies, as all of them deliberately make use of contrastive stress, comma intonation, or comma placement in at least part of the stimuli and, with the exception of Ney (1983), do not make claims as regards acceptability in general. Hence, these studies’ common denominator is also different from the above processing experiments in that all of them consciously infringe upon presumably unmarked orders to exemplify the primarily pragmatic and communicative functions of adjective placement. To sum up, the experimental accounts presented in this section by no means unequivocally speak in favor of hard-wired syntactic AORs. While brain activity as well as reading time measures upon presentation of certain AAN-phrases do 34 Again, the report is somewhat scarce and it is neither quite clear at what time the LAN occurred nor how remote two adjectival classes needed to be to elicit it – given the account, it appears to be an ELAN rather than a later LAN, though (see Friederici 1997; Osterhout et al. 2008 for discussion).

Adjective order restrictions

141

suggest that certain order restrictions exist, very fine-grained conceptual classes do not appear to stand the test of psycholinguistic empiricism. Thus, for example, substantial between subjects variability is reported by Kemmerer et al. (2007). The caveat is also reflected in Adam & Schecker’s (2011) findings of class proximity as a factor cancelling out presumed AORs, which seems transferrable to at least Kennison’s (2010) RT-study. Note that her test environments juxtaposed color adjectives with dimension and evaluative adjectives, respectively; both of the latter categories are found in substantial distance to the former. Yet, the idea of cognitive scaling, as suggested by Adam & Schecker (2011), appears potentially attractive given the indubitable acceptability differences between a myriad of AAN-phrases and their respective reversals. Against these considerations, the next section takes up again the idea of dedicated functional projections and presents further confinements with respect to their applicability.

3.2.2.2 Empirical undergeneration of functional projections The experimental evidence introduced in the previous section casts considerable doubt on the cognitive reality of AORs if conceived of as a sequence of discrete lexical semantic classes. Moreover, a closer look at some data reveals that not only are they dubious from a psycholinguistic perspective but also undergenerate as regards attested structures. Thus, resuming the discussion of syntactic modelling á la Cinque (1994), Ramaglia (2011), and Scott (2002), there are two major problems with universal hierarchies of projections, whose severity I believe renders the whole endeavor (i.e. the concrete implementation for adjective order only) unfeasible: (153)

problems with hierarchies of functional projections for AORs a. Given their fixed correlation of structural positions and possible property classes, they clearly undergenerate as regards the adjective orders actually attested (both cross-linguistically and language specifically) b.

Given that the concrete number of functional projections needs to be laid down, presumably by UG, the grammatical system can only make use of available projections – it is unclear how any of the clines in Tab.2 should accommodate all possible adjectives

EMPIRICAL UNDERGENERATION

With regard to problem (153a), counter-examples to all the hierarchies itemized in Tab.2 can readily be found, introspectively as well as by means of simple

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Adjective order restrictions, adjective classes, and property concepts in DP

corpus searches (for similar objections, see e.g. Svenonius 2008; Truswell 2009). For example, all of them (with the possible exception of Dixon 1982 and the somewhat unclear division into VALUE and HUMAN PROPENSITY ) make a distinction between EVALUATION ( or QUALITY, SUBJECTIVE COMMENT ), on the one hand, and SIZE , on the other. In terms of word order, the latter category is said to inevitably follow the former in unmarked expressions. Equally, SHAPE (or FORM ) is argued to canonically precede COLOR , while, in the most articulated structure, Scott (2002) introduces SIZE as preceding SPEED and WEIGHT as preceding AGE . Putting such clines to the test, the orders in (154)-(157) are unpredicted and, if taken as deviations from a hierarchy of dedicated functional projections, could only be assigned grammatical status with the preceding adjective raised to a FocusP. This, in turn, is predicted to be accompanied by focal stress (cf. Cinque 2010; Scott 2002). The following German examples, however, seem perfectly grammatical, do not rely on prosodic marking (i.e. focal stress or comma intonation), and are all instances of hierarchical modification. They are all hits from the DeReKo-corpus (TAGGED-T-archive)35 for concrete search queries of the kind [word-form of groß followed by word-form of schön followed by any ‘common noun’],36 with corpus references provided in brackets below the individual examples: (154)

EVALUATION /QUALITY > SIZE ? a. F[rage]: Eine gute Fee erfüllt Ihnen drei Wünsche. Was fällt Ihnen spontan ein, was einen Tag später? A[ntwort]: Wunsch 1: Ein grosser schöner Garten in einem sonnigen Dauer-Frühsommer. Wunsch 2: Ein grosser schöner Baum in diesem Garten. (A09/SEP.01672 St. Galler Tagblatt, 05.09.2009, S. 17; 5 fragen an. . .) b.

Nach diesen Anstrengungen hatten alle Hunger, und in einem großen schönen Saal gab es für circa 120 Mitfahrer ein gutes Essen bei herrlichem Wetter nach französischer Manier. (RHZ09/JUN.22208 Rhein-Zeitung, 26.06.2009; Ebernhahner bauen mit an vereintem Europa)

35 Accessible via the search software cosmas2-web of the Institut für deutsche Sprache (IDS); see . 36 This is the search syntax, in prose, for hits (154a-c). All other examples were extracted in the same way with the selected adjectives obviously altered. For translations of (154)–(157); see App.I.

Adjective order restrictions

(155)

143

c.

Alle Zahlen sind in den Geburtsdaten von ihr und ihrer Familie enthalten. Mit einem größeren Gewinn würde sie sich einen großen schönen Audi kaufen. (NON08/SEP.04230 Niederösterreichische Nachrichten, 08.09.2008, NÖN Großformat S. 44; LOTTO&p; JOKER-ZIEHUNGSERGEBNISSE VOM 7. SEPTEMBER)

d.

Freismuth erklärt das neue Freizeitvergnügen: “Irgendwo sind ‚Caches’, also Plastikdosen, voller kleiner netter Dinge und dem ‚Logbuch’ versteckt.“ (BVZ09/JUN.02203 Burgenländische Volkszeitung, 17.06.2009, S. 9; Moderne Schnitzeljagd)

e.

Der neue Weg zum OSP führt durch eine kleine nette Parkanlage hin zum Luther-Saal, einem der altehrwürdigen Schmuckstücke auf dem Diakonie-Gelände. (RHZ09/OKT.02644 Rhein-Zeitung, 05.10.2009; Kurze Wege zum neuen OSP)

SHAPE > COLOR ? a. [. . .] eine kreisrunde Kupferplatte mit dem Durchmesser 5 cm, in die drei rote runde Glasscherben und drei weiße kreisrunde Perlmuttscheiben eingelassen sind [. . .] (WPD/HHH.07860 Christoph73; Topinambur; 1: Holle, In: Wikipedia – URL:http://de.wikipedia.org: Wikipedia, 2005) b.

[. . .] während ein Wintersportler mit seinem roten runden Auto staunend zur Skipiste fährt. (NUZ09/SEP.02066 Nürnberger Zeitung, 21.09.2009, S. 26; Peter Angermann stellt in Bamberg aus – Der Maler schaut beim Schauen zu)

c.

Rosa Rüschenkleider unter schwarzen geraden Mänteln, schmale Kleider mit Blüten-Stickereien am Oberteil und eine lange rote Bustier-Robe mit Millefeuille-Falten sind eine moderne Interpretation des traditionellen Valentino-Looks. (A08/MAR.00987 St. Galler Tagblatt, 04.03.2008, S. 10; Pariser Hitparade)

144 (156)

Adjective order restrictions, adjective classes, and property concepts in DP

SIZE > SPEED ? a. Sprecher Cristophe Prazuck erklärte, die Piraten seien mit zwei schnellen kleinen Booten und einem sogenannten Mutterschiff unterwegs gewesen. (HAZ09/MAI.00466 Hannoversche Allgemeine, 04.05.2009; Griechischer Frachter gekapert) b.

(157)

Ein Aviso ist ein schnelles, kleines Kriegsschiff zur Nachrichtenübermittlung.37 (WPD/AAA.13329 Koppi2; Florian.Keßler; Würfel; u.a.: Aviso (Schiff), In: Wikipedia – URL:http://de.wikipedia.org: Wikipedia, 2005)

WEIGHT > AGE ? a. Vor allem junge Großstädter schätzen sogenannte Retro-Räder, alte schwere Drahtesel wie aus Omas und Opas Zeiten. (BRZ08/AUG.14692 Braunschweiger Zeitung, 30.08.2008; Schweizer lieben „Velos“ im Retro-Look) b.

Eines Tages bekam ich für den Marsch ein altes schweres Schießgewehr eingehändigt. (WPD/TTT.07708 Ulrich.fuchs; Albrecht Conz; Lienhard Schulz; u.a.: Kurt Tucholsky, In: Wikipedia – URL:http://de.wikipedia.org: Wikipedia, 2005)

Importantly, exemplary data such as (154)–(157) are not difficult to come by, with all of the above being random search queries and no random sampling returning negative results. Thus, the data are further support for skepticism as regards FPs in the cartographic sense. FP S The second problem formulated in (153b) above – the question of how the conceived FPs should account for accommodating the myriad of possible adjectives – is at least indirectly related to problem (153a). First, taking functional projections as the sole landing (in movement approaches) or base generation (in in-situ approaches) sites concretely predicts an upper limit to the number of possible adnominal adjectives. This assumption can be summed up by the following quote from Cinque, taken from his larger argument why the ‘specifier-of-FPsAVAILABILITY AND NUMBER OF NECESSARY

37 (156b) is, in fact, spelt with a comma. Yet, the context as a whole allows for leaving it out when actually uttered without any overt markedness.

Adjective order restrictions

145

approach’ is superior to theories taking bar-adjunction as the recursive locus of modification: »A second motivation is provided by the existence of a clear limit on the number of noncoordinated APs within DP (apparently not exceeding six or seven). While no principled reason exists for this limit in the adjunction hypothesis, there is an obvious reason for it in the generation-in-Spec hypothesis: namely, the limited number of functional projections independently available between D and NP.« (Cinque 1994: 96)

Cinque’s claim that there exists a “clear limit on the number of non-coordinated APs” is in itself highly dubious and the limit he assesses appears downright arbitrary. In fact, more than two stacked adjectives are seldom found in spoken language, while in written language, more than three adnominal adjectives are a rare sight (cf. e.g. Adam & Schecker 2011; Trost 2006). For example, explorative corpus searches in DeReKo’s TAGGED-T-archive for four and five prenominal adjectives in German returned 1.635 and 426 hits, respectively. Following cleansing,38 out of the 1.635 hits for the search query [MORPH(ADJ at) /+w1:1 MORPH (ADJ at) /+w1:1 MORPH(ADJ at) /+w1:1 MORPH(ADJ at) /+w1:1 MORPH(N nn)],39 only a single item, provided in (158), remained: (158) Doch auch im Kleinen habe „Operation Walküre“ meist gute Arbeit geleistet. „Die Charaktere sind durchweg mit Nuancen gezeichnet“, so Stefan Sprengel aus Vechelde. Da fehle glücklicherweise der klischeehafte blöde brüllende aggressive Nazideutsche in Uniform, der häufig in Filmen über diese Zeit zu sehen sei. (BRZ09/JAN.11264 Braunschweiger Zeitung, 27.01.2009; Nach „ Operation Walküre“ wünschen sich Schüler noch mehr Aufklärung) The reason for a clear tendency to limit the use of attributive modifiers is fairly certainly to be found in the domains of processing and working memory as well as the selectional restrictions brought about by the modified noun (cf. e.g. Eichinger 1992; Vendler 1968). Moreover, if one wishes to define such a limit

38 Word-class-tagging is a highly subjective and necessarily theory-driven endeavor; for more information on cleansing see 3.3.3. In particular, however, cleansing for this superficial search excluded all adjective sequences set apart by commas as well as items such as numerals and referential adjectives (for the latter, see 1.2.1.1.). 39 In prose: Four attributive adjectives, each separated by a single space (word distance = 1), followed by a common noun.

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Adjective order restrictions, adjective classes, and property concepts in DP

(in tendency, at least), three to four appears more appropriate a number. Yet, this seems to not be a matter of a hard and fast law from a grammatical perspective and unlikely down to syntactic architecture. Hence, the underlined DP – comprising seven attributive adjectives – in the invented example in (159) may appear clumsy or marked precisely because of its length, yet is hardly ungrammatical in a strict sense: (159) Ich suche einen schönen preiswerten langen schmalen dunkelblauen seidenen französischen Schal. ‘I am looking for a nice inexpensive long slim dark-blue silk French scarf.’ The date in (159) can also be consulted to address a second problem with positionally fixed and notionally charged FPs. Not only does it exceed Cinque’s alleged upper limit of attributive adjectives, it would also occupy certain Specpositions twice – in Cinque’s (1994) cline (see Tab.2) QUALITY as well as SIZE (unless we consider either lang ‘long’ schmal ‘slim’ shape adjectives). Given that (i) APs in these approaches sit in Spec-positions of FPs and (ii) phrases are traditionally taken to provide one and only one Spec-position (cf. e.g. Adger 2003: 109–110; Sternefeld 2008: 279, fn.45; Svenonius 2008: 39; Truswell 2009: 528), these would be unexpected representations. Therefore, Scott (2002) and Ramaglia (2011) attempt to remedy this shortcoming by extending the hierarchy of projections – in doing so, however, they consequently exacerbate the undergenerationproblem outlined in the previous section: The further FPs are fanned out, viz. the more fine-grained a hierarchy is conceived of, the more attested expressions will either not be covered at all or in need of explaining away by either questioning their grammaticality or assigning them peculiar stress patterns. The final problem with a UG-driven approach based on specifiers of FPs is even more mundane. It is essentially unclear, and usually not even addressed, which kinds of elements the approach is actually designed to capture. If the idea is meant to comprise all possible prenominal adjectives – a not too ludicrous theoretical as well as empirical desideratum, in fact – , it seems unclear how, for example, the better part of relational adjectives are to be accommodated (see 1.2.2.1.). Thus, none of the elements in (160) find their straightforward place in any of the semantic meta classes in Cinque’s (1994), Laenzlinger’s (2005), Ramaglia’s (2011), Scott’s (2002), or Sproat & Shih’s (1988; 1991) class hierarchies:

Adjective order restrictions

(160)

a.

die chirurgische Station ‘the surgical ward’

b.

das väterliche Haus ‘the paternal house’

c.

der Münchner Flughafen ‘the Munich airport’40

d.

die hiesige Fabrikanlage ‘the local factory’

147

Obviously, relational adjectives display a number of peculiarities and may thus be argued to constitute a distinct, derived, and hardly prototypical subclass among adjectives in general (cf. 1.2.2.3.). Yet, if hierarchies are meant to capture only monomorphemic, i.e. non-derived, quality adjectives, which are also closer to an adjectival prototype (for example, allowing for predicative and attributive use as well as degree modification), there is still a large number of expressions not easily accounted for. The examples in the lists in (161a/b) are testament to the ubiquity of such items and could easily be extended:41 (161)

a.

fromm ‘pious’; glatt ‘smooth’; reich ‘rich’; scharf ‘sharp’; zahm ‘tame’

b.

krank ‘sick’; laut ‘loud’; leer ‘empty’; müde ‘tired’; nackt ‘naked’

If we are to include adjectives such as the ones in (161) – all of which, at least in German, are non-derived and feature in predicative as well as attributive use – into the proposed clines in Tab.2, the only possible merging site appears to be the specifier of a QUALITY/ SUBJECTIVE COMMENT P. Yet, this would make them canonically preceding dimension- and size-related modifiers, which seems unlikely given the oddity of the expressions in (162): (162)

a.

?ein

frommer kleiner Mann ‘a pious short man’

b.

?ein

scharfes langes Messer ‘a sharp long knife’

c.

?der

leere große Eimer ‘the empty big bucket’

d.

?das

nackte dicke Mädchen ‘the naked fat girl’

Interestingly, the items in (161b) are typical SL-/temporary adjectives (see ch.2) and it is to many of these expressions that no clear-cut merging site lends itself

40 City names may be included in classes such as Sproat & Shih’s (1988) PROVENANCE , but not, for example, in Cinque’s (1994) NATIONALITY. 41 This is not to say that no proposed cline was able to capture these expressions – for example, Bache & Davidsen-Nielsen’s (1997) hierarchy includes two classes called GENERAL DESCRIPTION and PHYSICAL PROPERTY, whose vagueness will allow them to capture a large variety of expressions, including the ones in (161) above. In the cartographic approaches I am taking issue with here, however, no such dedicated FPs are claimed to exist.

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Adjective order restrictions, adjective classes, and property concepts in DP

if we are to follow Cinque (1994), Laenzlinger (2005), Ramaglia (2011), or Scott (2002). The corpus-study reported on in 3.3. will try to shed some light on the preferential treatment for some of them regarding AORs. As has been shown in the preceding, adjectival clines based on concrete notional concepts such as, for example, color, size, or shape can at best serve as preferences or tendencies with respect to AORs, but not as fast and hard rules. Moreover, given their absolute nature as UG-based elements, the claim that FPs encode these very concepts and are themselves rigidly ordered in the sense of the cartographic enterprise appears outright untenable: The approach undergenerates drastically and can only be saved by recourse to questionable grammaticality judgments and doubtful classifications of adjectives into certain notional meta-classes. The following section discusses further, less fine-grained approaches to AORs.

3.2.2.3 Further approaches to AORs OBJECTIVITY AND APPLICABILITY

From a more general perspective, many authors point to higher-ranking ordering principles governing AORs (and dominating possible fine-grained subclasses of adjectives if such are assumed). The general idea tends to be a hierarchy of subjectivity, applicability, and relativity as opposed to objectivity, reduced applicability, and absoluteness, with the former three notions preceding the latter three in hierarchical adjective sequences (cf. e.g. Hetzron 1978; Seiler 1978; Trost 2006; Vendler 1968; see also the discussion in Alexiadou et al. 2007: 313–318). In particular, Hetzron (1978), see (163), and Seiler (1978), see (164), argue for two superimposed principles of objectivity and applicability, respectively: (163)

AORS AS A FUNCTION OF INCREASING OBJECTIVITY OF THE ENCODED (cf. Hetzron 1978) A1 – A2 – A3 – . . . – An – Noun

CONCEPTS WITH INCREASING NOUN PROXIMITY

increasingly objective property concepts (164)

AORS AS A FUNCTION OF DECREASING APPLICABILITY OF THE ENCODED CONCEPTS WITH INCREASING NOUN PROXIMITY (cf. Seiler 1978; see also Champollion 2006) A1 – A2 – A3 – . . . – An – Noun decreasing applicability of adjectives

Adjective order restrictions

149

Arguments for or against the two principles in (163) and (164) are – for different reasons – outside of this book’s scope. As regards objectivity, the core of the claim is an essentially metaphysical and epistemological one and I will refrain from addressing the obscure issue whether, for example, the size of a certain object – once a comparison class has been established – is less objective an evaluation than its color or shape (but see e.g. Bierwisch 1989; Eisenberg 2006; Hetzron 1978; Quirk et al. 1985 for linguistic perspectives on subjective and objective adjectives).42 With respect to applicability, the question appears empirically testable, but would call for a large-scale corpus study not feasible within the bounds of this study. In fact, however, as argued by Champollion (2006: 13) for English and the reduced cline ‘QUALITY > SIZE > SHAPE > COLOR > PROVENANCE ’, the relative frequency ranks from the British National Corpus for the most frequent member from each of the five respective classes correspond nearly exactly with the hierarchy. The most frequent QUALITY adjective is more frequent than the most frequent SIZE adjective, which in turn occurs more often in the corpus than the most frequent SHAPE adjective, etc.43/44 More globally, a combined applicability / frequency approach may allow for speculations on how the strong intuitions of the existence of rigidly ordered property concepts and the principle of ‘conceptual iconicity’ (see 3.2.1.) are related: It seems a valid assumption that the more often a certain adjective is used as well as the more promiscuous it is with regarded to the nouns it modifies, the less suitable it will be / become in forming “a relevant and usual concept” (Bouchard 2011: n.p.) with a wider variety of nouns. If relevant and usual concepts are iconically embodied by adjective-noun proximity, highfrequency items (or items from high-frequency classes), will have a natural tendency to occur farther from the head noun than low-frequency items.45 In fact, at least the objectivity principle appears to have a core linguistic correlate in several of the interrelated classificatory oppositions introduced in

42 For a computational linguistic perspective, see e.g. Wiebe & Mihalcea (2006). For philosophical approaches, see e.g. Nozick (2003) or Popper (1972). 43 PROVENANCE appears to be an outlier in this generalization, however; see Champollion (2006: 13). 44 While not pursued any further in this study, the question is an interesting one and could potentially find new and increased impetus with the possibilities offered by distributional semantics (cf. e.g. Sahlgren 2006). 45 While the correlation appears to be real, this appears, to a degree at least, to constitute a chicken-or-the-egg-dilemma, naturally raising the question of whether, e.g., evaluative adjectives are inherently unsuited for conceptual classification and therefore more frequent than, say, color terms, or vice versa. While not pursuing speculations in this regard further, the idea behind Bouchard’s ‘concept’ will be picked up anew in 3.3. as well as ch.4.

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Adjective order restrictions, adjective classes, and property concepts in DP

1.2.2., such as the related distinctions between relative vs absolute and sub- vs intersective adjectives or modification patterns. Thus, combining the gist of the hierarchies in Tab.2 and Hetzron’s function of increasingly objective property concepts allows for a fairly direct mapping to Frawley’s (1992) proposals of a continuum of categorematicity (or absoluteness or intersectivity) introduced in 1.2.2.3. and repeated here as (165): (165)

CONTINUUM OF ‘TYPICAL ’ INTERSECTIVITY/OBJECTIVITY

(cf. Frawley 1992: §10.2) typic. subsective/relative – intermediate – typic. intersective/absolute ~subjective/speaker depend. – interm. – objective/speaker independ. e.g. (true) evaluatives – human propensity – dimension – shape – color This is also reflected in early reductionist models (see 1.2.1.1.), which analyze (nearly) all prenominal adjectives as moved constituents from reduced predicative constructions via transformations and map the complexities of the estimated paraphrases to adjective order (cf. Motsch 1964; Vendler 1968; see also Posner 1982). Thus, for example, Vendler (1968: 127) reasons “the natural order of adjectives [to] be a function of the transformational operations appropriate to the various kinds of adjective.” According to his set-up of adjectival classes along their deep-structural predicative uses (cf. Vendler 1968: ch.VI), intersective adjectives such as color terms belong to class A1 and dimensional adjectives to A2. They are assigned the respective spelled-out predicative structures in (166a/b), which – given that in this model attributive use is parasitic on predicative deep structures – are argued to fuel the natural adjective order in attributive use in (166c) as opposed to the deviant order in (166d):46 (166)

FRAGMENT OF

VENDLER’S (1968) ADJECTIVAL CLASSES ALONG PREDICATIVE

DEEP STRUCTURES

a. b.

(A1) (A2)

N that is red N whose Nm is

long47

(transformation)

→

red N

(transformation)

→

long N

46 In fact, Vendler’s classification includes a total of 9 different adjective types derived in this manner, while I am restricting the illustration to A1s and A2s for exemplary purposes here. 47 ‘Nm’ stands for ‘noun of measure’ and is meant to stand in for the dimension addressed by a certain adjective of type A2 (cf. Vendler 1968: 96).

Adjective order restrictions

151

DEEP- STRUCTURAL COMPLEXITY DRIVES

c.

a long red dress

AORS (A2 >> A1 >> N)

d.

?/*a

*(A1 >> A2 >> N)

red long dress

The arguments brought forth by Motsch (1964) and Vendler (1968) obviously rely on the theory-internal basics of transformational grammar in that adnominal modification is secondary to and derived from predicative structures. As shown in 1.2.1.1., however, strict reductionism runs into a myriad of problems. Moreover, the implicit claim appears to be that adjective order is a function of the cognitive computations necessary to transform deep structure into surface structure. The paraphrases for alleged deep-structural predicative structures, in turn, appear somewhat tailor-made for the data they are meant to explain, namely AORs, and can therefore be, rightfully I believe, questioned for “lacking independent evidence (other than ‘intuitions’ about how we do things)” (Bouchard 2002: 120). Yet, the insights from the classifications carved out in 1.2.2.2. and 1.2.2.3. have also been put to use with respect to AORs in more recent, non-transformational theories. Acknowledging the empirical shortcomings of fine-grained FPs (see 3.2.2.2.), several authors contemplate the subsective-intersective-divide as the crucial reference point for explaining the better part of AORs (cf. McKinneyBock 2010a; 2010b; Svenonius 2008; Truswell 2004; 2009).48 Importantly, in all of these works the subsective class is understood in the broad sense as depicted in 1.2.2.2., i.e. it is meant to include all evaluatives and dimensional adjectives and thus abstracts away from the semantic question of whether their modification patterns can be modelled intersectively via the introduction of comparison classes and evaluation perspectives. In fact, given the discussion in 1.2.2.3. and 1.2.2.4., relative as well absolute thus appear better suited terminologically for the distinction the authors have in mind.49 Be that as it may, the approaches

48 See also Trost (2006), who works in a dependency grammar framework and argues for a general preference of relative quality adjectives preceding absolute ones (these relate to the notional typology introduced in 1.2.2.1.). 49 This terminology, viz. relative and absolute, will also be reflected in the corpus study reported on in 3.3. As used by the authors in question, ‘subsective’ is even more problematic a term if we compare it to its more restricted use outlined in 1.2.2.3. – for example, in modification patterns with deverbal nouns such as heavy smoker. Although not discussed in any depth here (but see 4.1.1. and cf. Cinque 2010 and Larson 1998), in such patterns the adjective is realized very close to the noun, with typical intersective modifiers in structurally higher positions. Thus, in (i) heavy may well be reference-modifying, i.e. the ‘smokes-a-lot-reading’, while in (ii)

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have in common that they bisect adjectival modifiers into the two large classes, intersective and subsective, and are similar in that they reject further subdivisions on empirical grounds. Thus, a fine-grained cline such as Scott’s (2002), partially repeated here as (167a), can neatly be adapted to the superimposed hierarchy in (167b) without assuming any further superclass-internal AORs. Thus, by mere pooling of notional subclasses, a large body of counterevidence (see 3.2.2.2.) is naturally circumvented: (167) a. SUBJECTIVE COMMENT > ?EVIDENTIAL > SIZE > LENGTH > HEIGHT > SPEED > ?DEPTH > WIDTH > WEIGHT > TEMPERATURE > ?WETNESS > AGE > SHAPE > COLOR > (NATIONALITY/ORIGIN > MATERIAL b. SUBSECTIVE {SUBJECTIVE COMMENT / ?EVIDENTIAL / SIZE / LENGTH / HEIGHT / SPEED /?DEPTH / WIDTH / WEIGHT / TEMPERATURE / ?WETNESS / AGE } >> intersective {SHAPE / COLOR / NATIONALITY/ ORIGIN / MATERIAL} The theories diverge in their perspectives on the internal make-up of DPs in general. McKinney-Bock (2010a; 2010b) assumes a bare phrase structure format without node labels and without different functional projections as the locus of different kinds of adjectives. In contrast, she takes a degree head as the common base generation site of all gradable adjectives (including at least color and shape adjectives; cf. the discussion in 2.2.4.). Differences in adjective order are derived via the necessary comparison class for subsective adjectives, which is argued to be part of the structural configuration and said to lack for intersective adjectives. Subsectives thus merge with a wh-quantifier (‘HOW +wh for an X’), which is checked by a null-constituent that bears a +wh-feature and causes the quantifier to raise, pied-piping the adjective. Under conditions of identity of the provided comparison class and the head noun, the phonological material is deleted (cf. McKinney-Bock 2010a: 8; 2010b: 2). Following this template, the order a big brown dog, as opposed to ?/*a brown big dog, can be illustrated by the exemplary structures below. In (168), brown merges with a degree head, while in (169), big merges at an identical site with an additional wh-quantifier not introduced by brown. The null-C+wh in (169b) checks the wh-feature, causes

it is preferentially interpreted as referent-modifying, i.e. the weight interpretation due to its relative position to blond: i) a blond heavy smoker[preferred reading: reference-modifying / subsective] ii) a heavy blond smoker[preferred reading: referent-modifying / intersective]

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big to move up the tree, whereas the content of the for-a-PP is deleted given its identity with the head noun: (168)

INTERSECTIVE (COLOR /SHAPE /MATERIAL): NO ADDITIONAL NOMINAL ARGUMENT

a.

e.g. brown dog

b.

(169)

SUBSECTIVE (DIMENSION /EVALUATION ): WITH AN ADDITIONAL ARGUMENT

a.

e.g. big dog

b.

Accounting for the same empirical assumptions, namely the distributional pattern of subsective modifiers being encoded farther from the noun than intersective modifiers, Truswell (2004; 2009) and Svenonius (2008) assume a richer functional DP-structure than McKinney-Bock. Truswell (2009) introduces a head ‘X0 ’, which has a purely distributional effect and is not independently motivated outside its function as the split-off point between subsective and intersective modification. He provides the DP-template in (170) (cf. Truswell 2009: 528): (170) SUBSECTIVE PRECEDING INTERSECTIVE ADJECTIVES [DP D0 [XP AdjP*subsective X0 [NP AdjP*intersective N0]]] Truswell also discusses, and eventually dismisses, the possibility that X0 could be collapsed with a FP responsible for the distinction between count- and massdenoting expressions (for an overview see Alexiadou et al. 2007: ch.2.2.). This is the route taken by Svenonius (2008), who argues in favor of such a mapping and

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proposes the locus of the DP-internal divide between sub- and intersective modification to be found in his SORT P – a FP independently motivated and argued to be responsible for the individuation of masses, quantification, and counting (cf. Svenonius 2008: 21–23; see also Truswell’s (2004) FP DIV P). Based on the observation that dimension adjectives cannot modify mass nouns, unlike color, ethnic, or material adjectives (see (171a/b)), and the assumption that the former canonically precedes the latter three categories (171c), Svenonius proposes a structure as in (172) below. (171)

a.

*{long/big/wide/small/etc.} {rice/wine/water/air/etc.}50

b.

French/Italian/red/green/liquid/solid/etc. rice/wine/water/air/etc.

c.

a {long/wide} {French/red/solid} road

Thus, in Svenonius’ (truncated) structure in (172b), nP-modification51 is argued to be essentially intersective,52 while subsective modification occurs above SORT P and below a degree head, with the latter accounting for the presumably inherent gradability of subsective modifiers (example and tree adapted from Svenonius 2008: 38). (172) a. (a) very long French shoe b.

50 As indicated by the curly brackets, the asterisk here refers to all combinations of all the expressions in the example. Also, the example refers to the mass readings of all nouns and not potential count readings. 51 For the nP-layer as such see Adger (2003: 266–278) and 3.1. above. 52 On the assumption that ethnic adjectives are quality adjectives, which is far from obvious and not further discussed by Svenonius; see 1.2.2.3.

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As abovementioned, the approaches introduced in this subchapter (i.e. McKinney’s, Svenonius’, and Truswell’s) circumvent the better part of the undergeneration problem by virtue of being far more coarse-grained. While thereby weaker, their claims still entail strong predictions insofar as it is either functional projections that split the class of quality adjectives in two or movement triggered by whfeature-checking that causes one set of items to move and the other to remain in-situ. The corpus study in 3.3., while primarily designed to establish preferred positions of SL- / temporary adjectives, will implicitly shed light on the empirical adequacy of the proposed bipartition of AORs regarding quality adjectives by including two output categories ‘relative’ and ‘absolute adjectives’.

3.2.2.4 Summary Summing up, this subchapter has shown that presumably hard and fast grammatical rules of fine-grained notional classes clearly undergenerate as regards attested structures. Consequently, cartographic approaches which assume concrete property classes to project their own functional projections and thus try to syntactically model adjective sequences as a hierarchy of said FPs’ specifier positions have to be rejected. Regarding this study’s object of investigation in the narrower sense, it is also unclear how the approaches in question could possibly account for the large variety of different adjectives in open-class languages such as German or English – the placement of many of the presumably SL-adjectives, for example, remains inexplicit. While psycho- as well as neurolinguistic studies do not provide a clearly uniform picture, either, they do speak in favor of general order preferences and possibly cognitive scaling. ‘Weaker’, in the sense of more coarse-grained, approaches in this respect make use of the intersective-subsective or relative-absolute-divide and appear to follow more global perspective on AOR. The following two subchapters provide empirical tests – in the forms a corpus as well as a questionnaire study – as regards the general sentiment that SL- / temporary modifiers appear in farther distance of the head noun.

3.3 Corpus-study 3.3.1 Rationale Given two of the basic, yet contested assumptions introduced in this chapter, i.e. (i) that fairly fixed AORs exist in the first place and (ii) that temporary / SLadjectives are encoded further from the modified noun than permanent / IL-

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adjectives, a corpus study was conducted. The study is corpus-based in that it concretely searched for two prenominal adjectives attributively modifying a common (object) noun, with the temporary input adjectives as either the first or the second of two adjectives (the search procedure and information on the corpora used are introduced in 3.3.2. below). The input adjectives were predefined, while the respective output adjectives the search yielded were coded as belonging to one of seven classes. INPUT ADJECTIVES

The predefined adjectives searched for are listed in (173): (173) INPUT ADJECTIVES betrunken ‘drunk’, dreckig ‘dirty’, hungrig ‘hungry’, leer ‘empty’, leise ‘quiet‘, müde ‘tired’, nackt ‘naked’, nass ‘wet’, wütend ‘angry’, and zufrieden ‘content’ All of the adjectives in (173) are conventionally classified as SL-expressions; see ch.2. The adjectives in question can all be argued, and justifiably so, to denote typically fairly short-lived states – be this reflected in their lexical entries or a matter of world knowledge. All of them feature felicitously in several of the test environments established as typical for SLs but not for ILs (though not in all); see 2.1. For example, all of them are grammatical as predicate adjectives in Kratzer-style (1995) when-conditional tests as shown in (174a) for an animate subject referent and in (174b) for an inanimate subject referent: (174) a.

(Immer) wenn Maria

(Always) when Mary b.

betrunken hungrig müde leise ist, ist sie nackt wütend zufrieden Adj is is she

dreckig (Immer) wenn der Boden leer nass (Always) when the floor Adj

ist, ist er is is it

komplett betrunken. sehr hungrig. sehr müde. super leise. splitterfasernackt. extrem wütend. hochzufrieden. intensifier Adj sehr dreckig. komplett leer. pitschenass. intensifier Adj

Likewise, (175) illustrates that all of the adjectives in (173) feature felicitously in perception reports as established by Siegel (1980) and Carlson (1980) (hungrig

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‘hungry’, leise ‘quiet’, and leer ‘empty’ are apparently worse than the other examples, which may be down to the reduced compatibility of sehen ‘to see’ with the properties denoted by these adjectives): (175)

a.

Ich habe Maria (schon mal)

I have Mary (already once) b. Ich habe den Boden (schon mal) I have the floor (already once)

betrunken hungrig müde leise nackt wütend zufrieden Adj dreckig leer nass Adj

gesehen.

seen gesehen. seen

CLASSIFICATION OF OUTPUT ITEMS

To establish possibly preferred positions of putative SL-adjectives as attributive modifiers, the corpus search for each of the items in (173) always included two queries – one with the predefined adjective as the first of two prenominal adjectives, the second of which was non-determined, and one with the predefined adjective as the second of two prenominal adjectives. Given that concrete property classes such as COLOR or SIZE clearly undergenerate as regards actually attested orders, more coarse-grained classes that exhibit independent grammatical relevance were chosen for classification of the output adjectives, i.e. the respective second adjectives the search queries yielded (most of the classes have been independently justified in ch.1). Thus, the corpus study at hand cannot be taken as an indicator for or against the appropriateness of very fine-grained classes as such, although some general trends emerged and are picked up in the results (3.3.4.) and discussion (3.3.5.) sections. Generally, however, these classes reflect the broader nature of typical adjectival clines, including the relative-absolute distinction, non-gradable and relational adjectives, as well as classes for those second adjectives that are themselves best conceived of as temporary in nature. While it is unclear whether establishing a class of, e.g., “temporary adjectives” is in fact justified, it appears indispensable to include it, given the corpus study’s nature: If we are to investigate into the relative position of a class of adjectives denoting temporary properties, we have to treat them – at least provisionally – as if they constituted a class of their own. Below in (176) are the seven adjectival classes for which the output adjectives have been coded prior to statistical analysis:

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(176) CLASSIFICATION OF OUTPUT ADJECTIVES (7 CLASSES ) 1. RELATIVE PERMANENT ADJECTIVES (REL PERM) this class includes all relative gradable adjectives in the sense of Kennedy & McNally (2005) and Kennedy (2007); see 2.2.4., which are traditionally classified as IL- and thus permanent adjectives. Items thus include predominantly dimension adjectives and evaluatives (e.g. groß ‘large’, schmal ‘slim’, nett ‘nice’, schön ‘beautiful’) 2. ABSOLUTE PERMANENT ADJECTIVES (ABS PERM) including all absolute gradable adjectives in the sense of Kennedy & McNally (2005) and Kennedy (2007), which are traditionally classified as IL- and thus permanent adjectives. Items thus include a variety of gradable property concepts (such as, for example, typisch ‘typical’ or steril ‘sterile’), but in particular also color and shape adjectives (e.g. rot ‘red’, blau ‘blue’, rund ‘round’, eckig ‘angular’) 3. NON - GRADABLE PERMANENT ADJECTIVES (NONGRAD PERM) this class includes all adjectives that are not gradable, i.e. not compatible with degree modifiers or overt degree morphology, and would typically be recorded as IL-adjectives, including in particular several past participles (e.g., verheiratet ‘married’, gebraucht ‘used’, nummeriert ‘numbered’) 4. RELATIONAL ADJECTIVES (RELATION ) including all relational adjectives as established in 1.2.2. by negative evidence from quality adjectives and (for the most part) incompatibility with predicative use. These have been argued to always display permanent readings. Items also include ethnic adjectives (e.g., deutsch ‘German’), adjectives derived from place names (e.g. Münchner ‘MunichAdj’), as well as material adjectives (e.g. gläsern ‘glassAdj’) 5. TEMPORARY ADJECTIVES (TEMP) this is the class all input adjectives belong to, i.e. absolute adjectives that would be understood as SL-items (e.g. nackt ‘naked’, müde ‘tired’), but also ambiguous expressions in temporary use (e.g. wild ‘wild’ as in mit wildem Haar ‘with wild hair’). Here, decisions oftentimes had to be made on an item-by-item basis, depending on the temporariness of an expression’s use in a particular construction: Thus, for example, dunkel ‘dark’ in ihr dunkles nasses Haar ‘her dark wet hair’ was classified as a REL PERM item, while in auf nasser dunkler Straße ‘on a wet dark street’ was coded as TEMP

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6. NON - GRADABLE TEMPORARY ADJECTIVES (NONGRAD TEMP) the bulk of this class’s expressions are past participles – lexicalized as well as non-lexicalized ones – which can be argued to hold only temporarily of the modified expressions (e.g. gefesselt ‘chained’, blutbefleckt ‘bloodstained’, ungekämmt ‘uncombed’ – the only nondeverbal item was halbdunkel in halbdunkler Kinosaal ‘penumbral movie theater’)53 7. PRESENT PARTICIPLE (PRESPART ) this class includes all present participles – irrespective of their overall classification as adjectives or attributively used verb forms, these expressions cluster among prenominal adjectives and, being deverbal, will in the majority of cases be ‘derived’ from SL-expressions (e.g. spielend ‘playing’, fliegend ‘flying’, dümpelnd ‘pootling along’).54 Besides classification of output adjectives, two further possible predictors for AORs were encoded for each hit of the corpus search: (i) definiteness or indefiniteness of the complete DP including the two adjectives and the head noun55 and (ii) the relative morphophonological weight of the two adjectives within any DP, i.e. either the first adjective was longer, the second adjective was longer, or the two were equal in length. These two pieces of information did not directly contribute to the generation of hypotheses, yet were used for post-hoc-analysis. In particular, weight had to be counterchecked against results, given its potential bearing on constituent order along the lines of Behaghel’s and Pāṇini’s laws on increasing terms or constituents (see 3.2.1. above). HYPOTHESES

Prior to the search, three testable hypotheses have been formulated. The first one is the null hypothesis in (177) underlying statistical analysis, which is not 53 For some items of this class it was difficult to unambiguously assign them non-gradable status – in case of which they tended to end up in the TEMP class. 54 Given that the majority of activity verbs are classified as SL; see ch.2. These cannot, however, be tested by means of the standard diagnostics, as the better part of them, i.e. all nonlexicalized forms, are ungrammatical in post-copular positions. Thus, e.g., the input adjective wütend ‘angry’ would not have been classified as a present participle, given its uncontroversial degree of lexicalization and behavior as a fairly prototypical adjective (e.g., in predicative as well as adverbial uses). 55 Definiteness was recorded to allow for possible post-hoc analysis. As touched upon in ch.2, definite DPs, unlike indefinite ones, allow for temporal dissociation of an adjectival property concept from the sentence’s main predicate. Eventually, however, no statistical differences were recorded.

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expected to hold given the general applicability of AORs established in the theoretical literature: (177) HYP 0 – NULL HYPOTHESIS All adjectives from the seven output classes as well as the input adjectives being regular prenominal adjectives in German, no statistically significant differences are expected between the different output classes and their distributions with respect to the input adjectives. A second hypothesis in (178) concerns the assumed general trend of temporary / SL-adjectives preceding permanent / IL-adjectives, i.e. being encoded farther from the modified noun. (178) HYP I – SL-ADJECTIVES PRECEDING IL-ADJECTIVES If assumptions concerning the temporality of the adjectival concepts as a predictor of AORs are correct, we expect output classes 1.–4. (the permanent classes) in (176) to be robustly found closer to the head noun than the input adjectives and expect this distribution to be significantly different from output classes 5.–7. (the temporary classes). There are no concrete expectations as regards the clustering of output classes 5.–7. with respect to input adjectives. The third hypothesis in (179) concerns the more general trends carved out in the theoretical literature regarding AORs, namely the tendency of relative adjectives (mostly dimension and evaluative adjectives; see 1. in (176)) being encoded farther from the head than absolute ones (see in particular class 2. but also 3./4. in (176)). Crucial in this respect is the classification of the input adjectives along the lines of Kennedy & McNally (2005), Kennedy (2007), and Toledo & Sassoon (2011) as absolute and as such distinct from relative adjectives. Given that the relative-absolute split cuts through the permanent classes and that the input adjectives are absolute in the above sense, this last hypothesis is thus irreconcilable with HYP I in (178). (179) HYP II – RELATIVE PRECEDING ABSOLUTE ADJECTIVES If the assumptions are correct that relative adjectives are encoded farther from the head noun than absolute ones, we expect class 1. items from (176) as the first of two adjectives to occur with a significantly higher frequency than output adjectives from classes 2.–7. There are no concrete expectations with regard to the order of input adjectives and any of the output classes 2.–7.

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3.3.2 Search procedure The general search procedure was simple and straightforward. Given the query’s nature, it was necessary to consult one of the word-class-tagged subsections of the German Reference Corpus DeReKo of the IDS in Mannheim/Germany via the web-based Cosmas II corpus analysis system. The DeReKo has recently been significantly increased in size and as of now contains over 24 billion word tokens, making it the largest linguistically motivated collection of German texts worldwide (cf. Kupietz & Lüngen 2014). Consulting the main archive, however, would have yielded non-manageable output, as neither word classes nor their subclasses can be used to directly narrow down search queries. That is, either the local co-text of a word in question is concretely defined or the output will include simply all contexts in which the word in question occurs. In this case, the TAGGED-T-archive was used. TAGGED-T contains roughly 40% of DeReKo’s main archive with publication dates up to 2009, i.e. about 1.5 billion word tokens spread over 26 corpora,56 mostly from newspapers, press agencies, and internet sources. It allows searching for word-class annotated items in certain positions, e.g. ‘attributive adjective’ or ‘common noun’, and was thus crucial for the study at hand. In total, 20 queries were run; two for each of the adjectives in question, once as the first of two prenominal adjectives (AxAattCN) and once as the second (AattAxCN), where ‘Ax’ stands for the predefined adjective, ‘Aatt’ for an arbitrary attributive adjective, and ‘CN’ for an arbitrary common noun. The examples in (180a) and (180b) are the search syntaxes for the item nackt ‘naked’, and differ from all other queries in the predefined adjective only: (180)

a.

nackt &nackt /+w1:1 MORPH(ADJ at) /+w1:1 MORPH(N nn)

b.

MORPH(ADJ at) /+w1:1 &nackt /+w1:1 MORPH(N nn)

SEARCH SYNTAX OF THE CORPUS STUDY FOR

The Cosmas II command in prose for (180a) would be as follows: “Search for all word-forms of the lexeme nackt, followed directly (word distance = 1) by any item tagged as ‘attributive adjective’, followed directly (word distance = 1) by any item tagged as ‘common noun’.” The command in (180b) is the same, with the exception that the arbitrary attributive adjective precedes the occurrence of nackt. The search queries for all other adjectives used the same template.

56 For an itemization of TAGGED-T’s corpora, see .

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3.3.3 Yield and data cleansing The 20 queries yielded an overall output of 6.622 occurrences, with contributions of individual adjectives highly unequally distributed: The lowest output was generated for the query [dreckigAattCN] with 33 hits, the highest output for [zufriedenAattCN] with 1.256 hits.57 In a next step, the data were cleansed, leading to fundamental adjustments of the overall figures. Data cleansing was carried out by hand, and brought about a significant reduction of items with 6114 items being deleted (roughly 92% of the overall yield), resulting in a remaining sample size of N=508. Cleansing occurred for a variety of reasons, mostly in cases in which one of the adjectives in question did not actually feature as a modifier with the DP in question or was of a class of items not directly relevant to the question at hand. The most prominent reasons for exclusion are itemized in the following (without any particular order of relevance): MOST COMMON REASONS FOR EXCLUSION FROM THE SEARCH OUTPUT

All occurrences of commas in between the two adjectives (see the discussion in 3.2.1. above) / Wrong part-of-speech-tag (e.g. Ich liebe nackte Männer ‘I love naked men’, in which liebe is a verb not an adjective) / One or both of the adjectives in non-positive form, viz. comparatives as well as superlatives (e.g. ein größeres leeres Haus ‘a larger empty house’ or der ältere betrunkene Mann ‘the older drunk man’) / Eventive nouns as the head of the modified NP (e.g. tagelanges nacktes Dastehen ‘naked standing around for days’) / The two adjectives are not part of the same DP (e.g. straddle a sentence boundary or the first of the two is part of a preceding VP) / Adjective-modifying use of the first adjective (i.e. one of the two adjectives does not in fact modify the head noun) as well as exclusion of all modified adjectives (e.g. der ganz schön müde Junge ‘the pretty tired boy’) / Exclusion of all double entries / Exclusion of adjectives that function as a compound element (either as the modifier of the head noun or the head of an AA-compound it forms with the first adjective) / First adjectives that are referential, such as discourse-anaphoric/-cataphoric (e.g. erwähnt ‘mentioned’ or folgend ‘following’), numerals, or demonstratives; see 1.2.2.1 / Several idioms (e.g. leeres Versprechen ‘empty promise’ or nackte Tatsachen ‘crude facts‘) or clear-cut phrasal names (e.g. rote Karte ‘red card’) / Intensional/modal adjectives (e.g. vermeintlich ‘alleged’ or age adjectives such as alt ‘old’ in the sense of former).

57 See the Zusatzinformationen under http://www.degruyter.com/view/product/472464 for the overall output quantities.

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3.3.4 Results GENERAL RESULTS

All statistical analyses were carried out with SPSS software (IBM SPSS package Statistics 22). Tab.4 provides the overall occurrences of the seven subclasses of the respective output adjectives and their distribution given the respective input adjectives as either the first (A1) or the second (A2) of two prenominal adjectives, while Fig.1 illustrates the overall distributions in bar chart format. Here, input adjectives are the primary independent variables concretely searched for, i.e. nackt, müde, etc., while output adjectives are the dependent variables, i.e. hits for the tagged items searched for via MORPH(ADJ at); see (180) above. Table 4: Absolute occurrences of output adjective classes depending on the position of the input adjectives. Figures include the total 508 hits for all 20 search queries. position input adjective class output adjective relative permanent (REL PERM)

A1 56

A2 102

absolute permanent (ABS PERM)

42

11

non-gradable permanent (NONGRAD PERM)

36

30

relational (RELATION )

147

0

temporary (TEMP)

11

13

non-gradable temporary (NONGRAD TEMP)

11

20

present participle (PRESPART )

11

18

314

194

total

A chi-square test was performed, revealing a significant relationship between the position of the input adjective and class membership of the output adjective; χ2 (6, N = 508) = 164.36, p < .001. Fig.1 and the cross-tabulation chart show clear trends for several output categories to cluster with one of the two positions, most notably a constant for RELATION (A1 = 100%), a distinct tendency for ABS PERM adjectives (A1 = 79.2%), and a slight tendency for REL PERM adjectives (A2 = 64.6%).58 Being constant, the 147 cases of the category RELATION had to be eliminated from the data set for further evaluation, resulting in a new set with N = 361. A welcomed side-effect of this elimination were the ensuing roughly comparable sample sizes for A1 (N = 167) and A2 (N = 194). A second chi-square test was

58 See the Zusatzinformationen under http://www.degruyter.com/view/product/472464 for crosstabulation.

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Figure 1: Overall occurrences of output adjective classes given the input adjective as the first (gray bars) or the second adjective (black).

performed, again indicating a significant relationship between the position of the input adjective and class membership of the output adjective; χ2 (5, N = 361) = 34.71, p < .001. Trends to be read off from cross-tabulation naturally remained as above. The criteria for classification accuracy were met; chance accuracy = 33.31% < classification accuracy = 43.8%. MULTINOMIAL LOGISTIC REGRESSION FOR OUTPUT CLASSES

Crucially, after elimination of RELATION , no unambiguous clustering of input adjective position and output class membership remains. Given that all variables, independent as well as dependent ones, are categorical and that the categorical dependent variable includes more than two possible outcomes (the seven possible output classes), a multinomial logistic regression was performed (cf. Schendera 2014: ch.3 for all procedures and computations of multinomial regression analyses). The three predictor variables were taken into account: input adjective position (POSITION ), definiteness of the complete DP (DEF ), and morphological weight (WEIGHT ). Chi-square tests indicate a significant improvement over an empty model for the predictors POSITION (χ2 (5, N = 361) = 37.03, p < .001) and WEIGHT ( χ2 (5, N = 361) = 117.91, p < .001), but not for DEF ( χ2 (5, N = 361) = 4.69, p = .455). Thus, definiteness is being neglected as a factor in the following. Multinomial logistic regression automatically compares data from the dependent variable’s different categories and their behavior as regards the indepen-

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dent variable(s) against a reference category, i.e. one of these categories themselves. In this case, the category TEMP (temporary) was chosen as the reference category, given that the input adjectives are best classified as belonging to this very category themselves and, consequently, the found distribution of A1s and A2s appears essentially arbitrary for combinations of input adjectives and TEMP adjectives; see Fig.1. The following table provides the pertinent results of the multinomial regression only for class membership of the output adjective in relation to the input adjective’s position against the reference category TEMP:59 Table 5: Results of multinomial regression for class membership of the output adjective in dependence of the input adjective’s position. The reference category for the equation is TEMP. ‘B’ stands for the regression coefficient, ‘Exp(B)’ for odds ratio, and ‘sig.’ for the significance measures. output input

relPERM

absPERM

nongradPERM

nongradTEMP

prespart

position A1 B Exp(B) sig.

–.399 .671 p = .394

1.723 5.604 p = .002

.289 1.336 p = .588

.309 .734 p = .621

.164 .849 p = .797

Given that the regression coefficient ‘B’ is non-standardized, its interpretation can be misleading (cf. Schendera 2014: 216). The most direct way for reading off the relative importance of categorical variables is provided by the odds ratios ‘Exp(B)’ – the larger Exp(B) is than 1, the higher the influence of a variable in comparison to the reference category. Thus, Tab.5 reads as follows: – Compared to the reference category TEMP, only ABS PERM is a statistically significant category (p = .002, cf. lowermost row) – Compared to the reference category TEMP, if the input adjective is in position A1, it is roughly 460% more likely that the output adjective in position A2 is of category ABS PERM (Exp(B) = 5.604) – Compared to the reference category TEMP, Exp(B)s cluster around the reference value 1 for the other four categories (REL PERM, NONGRAD PERM, NONGRADTEMP, PRESPART ) and none of them is statistically significant Fig.2 illustrates the likelihood of an output adjective to feature as the second of two prenominal adjectives given its class membership in comparison to the reference category temp:

59 See the Zusatzinformationen under http://www.degruyter.com/view/product/472464 for the multinomial regression for all independent variables.

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Figure 2: Odds ratios (likelihood) of output adjectives from the different classes to feature as the second of two adjectives in comparison to the reference class TEMP. The reference category is consequently set to ‘0’.

An interesting observation concerns the output category REL PERM. As stated above, the category shows a slight tendency to cluster with input position A2, i.e. it is more likely to have a REL PERM adjective preceding our input adjectives than vice versa (see Fig. 1). It also exhibits the lowest significance-value among the non-significant output categories (p = .394). Closer inspection of the data reveals an interesting pattern, possibly ascribable to the kinds of texts dominating the used corpora, i.e. newspaper articles: Out of a total of 158 occurrences of output category REL PERM (A1 = 56; A2 = 102), 54 include either of the two ageadjectives jung ‘young’ or alt ‘old’ modifying nouns that denote animate beings, mostly humans. Among these, 31 cluster with the A1s and only 23 with the A2s. While excluding them from the computation (or reclassifying them) does not seem easily justifiable (but see the discussion in 3.3.5. below), it is worth noting that multinomial logistic regression yields a significant result for the modified data upon elimination of all observations of either jung or alt modifying an animate referent (as a matter of course, elimination of output sentences includes both positions A1 and A2). At the same time, ABS PERM remains significant, yet diminishes slightly in magnitude, and behaves conversely with respect to the reference category compared to REL PERM:

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–

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For the modified data, compared to the reference category TEMP, ABS PERM (p = .005) as well as REL PERM ( p = .036) are statistically significant categories Compared to the reference category TEMP, if the input adjective is in position A1, it is roughly 350% more likely that the output adjective in position A2 is of category ABS PERM (Exp(B) = 4.512) Compared to the reference category TEMP, if the input adjective is in position A1, it is roughly 63% less likely that the output adjective in position A2 is of category REL PERM (Exp(B) = .374)

A second observation worth mentioning concerns the output class ABS PERM. Out of the 53 overall output items from this class, only 11 were not color adjectives (e.g. steril ‘sterile’, blasiert ‘smug’, or exotisch ‘exotic’). Their distribution, however, has no bearing on the respective positions – overall the class shows a clear bias towards clustering close to the modified noun, while we do occasionally find color as well as non-color adjectives as A1s. The abundance of color adjectives can arguably be explained by the existence of one other class into which absolute adjectives have merged and which does not comprise any color adjectives, namely TEMP. Moreover, it is interesting to note that we do not find any shape adjectives among ABS PERM, an outcome I do not have a satisfying explanation for (other than the speculation that at least seven of the input adjectives appear to favor person nouns, which, in turn, are not prone to be modified by shape adjectives, while they at least more easily allow for modification by color terms – for example, in the realm of hair or skin color). The following computations of individual input adjectives, however, are based on the output material including the two age adjectives in order to keep sample sizes relatively large. Even upon inclusion of said items, several input adjectives are not significant in isolation, which must be attributed to their respective sample sizes. Tab.6 enumerates the model fitting information (chi-squares and significances) for all individual input adjectives. Thus, we only find significant results for betrunken, hungrig, leer, nackt, and nass, but not for dreckig, leise, müde, wütend, and zufrieden. At the same time, the former five input adjectives yielded the five largest outputs with at least 29 output sentences, while the latter five yielded a maximum of 15 output sentences. The correlation between sample size and significance levels suggests that larger sample sizes may well yield different results for the non-significant input adjectives.

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Table 6: Model fitting information for individual adjectives. input adjective

model fitting information

betrunken

χ2 (12, N = 29) = 4.66, p < .001

dreckig

χ2 (6, N = 6) = 12.14, p = .059

hungrig

χ2 (9, N = 31) = 30.39, p < .001

leer

χ2 (15, N = 107) = 138.23, p < .001

leise

χ2 (6, N = 15) = 9.19, p = .163

müde

χ2 (9, N = 15) = 15.84, p = .070

nackt

χ2 (15, N = 106) = 93.27, p < .001

nass

χ2 (12, N = 37) = 38.91, p < .001

wütend

χ2 (12, N = 10) = 20.05, p = .066

zufrieden

χ2 (2, N = 5) = 2.91, p = .233

ANOVA FOR THE INDEPENDENT VARIABLE WEIGHT Finally, the category WEIGHT was analyzed for the five significant adjectives from Tab.6, which still account for a substantial sample size (N = 310). Weight measures were assigned morpho-phonologically based on the number of syllables for each adjective. The data were coded numerically as well as pseudometrically to allow for comparisons of means as well as application of a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). Thus, items were coded for three different values of WEIGHT: “–1” = the 1st of two adjectives has a higher weight (i.e. more syllables) than the 2nd; “0” = the two adjectives are equal in weight; “1” = the 2nd adjective has a higher weight. Coding items metrically then allows for comparisons of means for occurrences within individual classes. Fig.3 illustrates the distributions of means for the category WEIGHT for the six output classes and the two possible positions of the input adjective as either A1 or A2 . The figure shows that WEIGHT is highly correlated with adjective order, in particular so for all output categories that yielded non-significant results in the multinomial logistic regression measures (with the exception of TEMP, i.e. NONGRAD PERM, NONGRAD TEMP, and PRESPART; see Tab. 5 and Fig. 2), which essentially display fairly robust mirror images depending on the input adjective’s position. While still significantly different depending on input position, REL PERM and ABS PERM do not exhibit the same inverse behavior. An ANOVA was calculated on the influence of output class in combination with input position on WEIGHT means: The analysis was significant, F(11, 298) = 36.68, p < .001.

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Figure 3: Measures of morphophonological weight for the respective two adjectives across output classes with the input adjective either as the first (gray bars) or the second adjective (black).

Tab.7 itemizes the post-hoc tests (Tukey HSD), juxtaposing the means and standard deviations for the category WEIGHT for each output class with the input adjectives as A1 or A2:60 Table 7: Post-hoc results (Tukey HSD) of the ANOVA for the intra-output-category distribution of adjectives depending on adjective weight. input position output class

A1 vs A2 mean diff. / significance

A1

A2

relPERM

M = –.50, SD = .51

M = .00, SD = .65

diff = .50, p < .001

absPERM

M = .03, SD = .28

M = –.70, SD = .48

diff = .73, p = .002

nongradPERM

M = .83, SD = .38

M = –.90, SD = .31

diff = 1.72, p < .001

TEMP

M = .17, SD = .41

M = –.15, SD = .56

diff = .32, p = .974

nongradTEMP

M = .91, SD = .30

M = –.94, SD = .24

diff = 1.85, p < .001

prespart

M = .75, SD = .71

M = –.94, SD = .24

diff = 1.69, p < .001

Tab.7 shows that WEIGHT is a statistically significant measure within the respective output classes (with the exception of TEMP). Somewhat counterintuitive, however, this means that the sequence of any of our temporary adjectives and 60 See the Zusatzinformationen under http://www.degruyter.com/view/product/472464 for the complete ANOVA output.

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any of the other adjectives under investigation is not directly influenced by morphophonological weight: Given that 250 of the corpus items included monosyllabic input adjectives (leer, nackt, and nass), while only 60 items included polysyllabic adjectives (betrunken and hungrig; see Tab.6 for the adjectives’ respective sample sizes), the distributions largely reflect the shortness of the input adjectives as well as the peculiarities of the search procedure. As the lion’s share of the yielded output included the monosyllabic input adjectives as either A1 or A2, the procedure inevitably led to mean weight measures of ‘≥ .0’ for A1s and ‘≤ .0’ for A2s, respectively. Put more simply, both A1s and A2s will logically cluster with adjectives that are statistically more or at least equally weighty. While still significant, the smaller mean differences for the output categories REL PERM and ABS PERM, in turn, appear in line with these two categories being the only significant ones as illustrated in the multinomial logistic regression above.

3.3.5 Discussion First and most generally, the null hypothesis HYP 0 (see (177)) needs to be rejected. We do find an overall trend for at least three of the predefined output classes, viz. REL PERM, ABS PERM, and RELATION . The latter two of these are statistically significant, with RELATION being a statistical constant and without exception the second of two prenominal adjectives (therefore, the class had to be eliminated for statistical analysis). Thus, RELATION is arguably the single output class that can be granted rule-like status with respect to AORs and the input adjectives at hand. Moreover, REL PERM also reaches significance once we isolate the clusters of age adjectives modifying person nouns. The other four output classes (TEMP, NONGRAD PERM, NONGRAD TEMP, and PRESPART ) behave arbitrarily with respect to their positioning relative to the input adjectives, yet also yielded the by far fewest output items. Second, the sentiment that ‘temporary adjectives’ are encoded further from the modified element than ‘permanent’ ones – formulated as HYP I in (178) – has to also be rejected. REL PERM and ABS PERM, the two major permanent classes besides the eliminated class RELATION , show inverse behaviors with respect to input adjective positions, the former predominantly featuring as the first, the latter as the second of two prenominal adjectives. Third, HYP II in (179), adhering to more general claims AORs and the tendency of relative adjectives to precede absolute ones, is corroborated. This, in fact, logically follows from the reasons for which HYP I has to be rejected as outlined in the preceding paragraph. The generality of the reasoning can justifiably be

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extended from the relationship of the input adjectives to the respective output classes by transitive reasoning: That REL PERM robustly (significantly upon elimination of age adjectives) precedes input adjectives, which are themselves absolute, while the tendency of ABS PERM items to succeed them is statistically significant, allows for the inference that relative precede absolute adjectives. More concretely, however, the relative >> absolute pattern within DP can at best be captured in the form of a statistical or normic law, as it appears to allow for exceptions and as such is not strictly falsifiable (cf. Schurz 2001). While a sense of ‘normality’ thus exists, theories as to the grammatical status of this particular AOR implementation (à la McKinney 2010a/b, Svenonius 2008, or Truswell 2009) cannot directly be substantiated – at least one emerging pattern, namely age adjectives, can be shown to constitute a robust exception (see below). While definiteness of the DPs has no bearing on adjective order, weight is highly correlated with adjective positions. However, given the overall shortness in terms of syllable number of the input adjectives – in particular the most productive ones –, it is small wonder that we find significant mean difference effects for weight measures: Being short, an input adjective searched for as an A1 will inevitably have a tendency to be followed by longer expressions (or at maximum ones equal in length), while if searched for as an A2, it will logically be preceded by longer expressions (or at maximum ones equal in length). The significant mean differences for all output classes merely reflect this general argument, while the reduced mean differences for the classes REL PERM and ABS PERM confirm their status as significant predictors in their own right: being of one of the two significant output classes overrides the arbitrariness induced by this particular search procedure. Note that it is this very arbitrariness that does not allow for general assumptions about the status of weight as a factor for adjective order – more adjectives from varying lengths would have to be taken into account for claims in this regard. However, sticking to the results of the study at hand, the implications of Behaghel’s and Pāṇini’s laws on increasing terms or constituents have to be rejected. Given the predefined output classes, this corpus study does not allow for claims as regards statistical trends for fine-grained lexical semantic classes such as the ones introduced in Tab.2. Yet, at least three evident trends merit mention in this regard, which at least partly substantiate claims that notional lexical semantic classes do in fact come into play with respect to AORs, although certainly not as grammatical principles: – The better part of the ABS PERM class consists of basic color terms. Given that the input adjectives are themselves absolute adjectives in the sense of Kennedy & McNally (2005) and the fact that ABS PERM items tend to follow the input adjectives, this may well speak in favor of a general tendency of

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basic color terms to be encoded in close proximity to nouns (whereas, as mentioned above, shape adjectives are underrepresented in the study). Yet, this is merely a trend and we also find color terms preceding the input adjectives The better part of the REL PERM class consists of dimension and evaluative (subjective comment) adjectives. While the study does not allow for any intra-class order preferences, the general tendency for these fine-grained classes to appear in greater distance from the modified noun is thus backed up One modification pattern appears particularly peculiar: age adjectives in combination with person nouns. These items’ distribution, classified as REL PERM, somewhat distort the neat ‘relative-before-absolute’-picture, although their relative position is essentially in line with observations by Dixon (1982) and Scott (2002), see the AGE class in Tab.2, as well as comments by Eichinger (1992: 321–323), who addresses this very pattern with respect to adjective order, and Bouchard (2002; 2011)

Taken together, the rejection of HYP I and the endorsement of HYP II lead to the conclusion that what are presumably stage-level input adjectives in (173) do not present themselves in any extraordinary manner as regards AORs: They follow the general tendency of absolute adjectives being placed in closer proximity to the head noun than relative ones and, together with a variety of items such as present participles and non-gradable adjectives essentially cluster in central positions in between dimension / evaluative adjectives and basic color terms. While the answer to the question whether core SL-adjectives precede ILadjectives within the make-up of the German DPs turns out negatively on empirical grounds, the questionnaire study reported on in the following subchapter is designed to test for a variety of expressions claimed to exhibit interpretational SL-IL-alternations based on polysemy and contextual information.

3.4 Questionnaire study I 3.4.1 Rationale An offline questionnaire study was designed, making use of polysemous adjectives and the potential bearing of their respective different interpretations on AORs. As will be explicated below, polysemy here is understood broadly, covering truly polysemous items that have typically permanent or temporary interpretations, respectively, as well as expressions that exhibit the essentially same readings,

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yet are argued to hold for different time spans depending on contextual information. Within each test item, the respective critical adjective was paired with a second, by trend permanent adjective. Two different versions of the questionnaire were designed and presented to different groups of test subjects, with the two versions differing in all critical items, yet including the same amounts of ‘permanent’ and ‘temporary’ adjectives. Twelve critical adjectives were chosen. Out of these, seven exhibit one reading that can be captured under the labels agentivity or human behavior, i.e. they are taken from the class of items of presumably non-stative adjectives that pass the Lakoff-style (1966) tests introduced and critically discussed in 2.2. On the other – arguably primary – reading, a certain property can be said to be ascribed to an individual as a characteristic trait. Thus, these items, while conventionally understood as IL-adjectives, are oftentimes conceived of as undergoing regular Il-to-SL-shifts whenever used in particular environments or given particular contextual information. Alternatively, in less theoretically charged terminology, we can attest the general alternation between general and behavioral characterization for these items found for many evaluative adjectives. The other five items display true polysemy in that one of two distinct meanings can arguably best be related to (more) temporary readings and the other to permanent ones. Thus, the questionnaire was designed as a test bed for the bearing of temporariness as a factor of polysemy-driven AOR-differences in multiple prenominal modification structures. The following sections introduce the participants and experimental set-up, the items and hypotheses, the statistical analysis, and a discussion of the results, respectively.

3.4.2 Participants and set-up PARTICIPANTS

Overall, 36 test subjects participated in the questionnaire study, 7 of which had to be excluded from the analysis – 4 were not native speakers of German and 3 were over 40 years of age. The remaining 29 participants were between 17 and 35 years old, native speakers of German, and undergraduate students of sociology and/or German philology, with 15 out of the 29 finishing version A and 14 finishing version B of the form. No participant had received any linguistic training in syntax or semantics at the time of completing the questionnaire. The study was conducted during two regular seminar meetings at the Faculty of Social Sciences at Georg-August-University Göttingen and at the German department at the

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University of Kassel, respectively. Participation was voluntary and neither bound to fulfilment of course credit nor payment. SET- UP

Both versions of the questionnaire consisted of 48 test items overall, 12 critical items encoding different combinations of ‘temporary’ and ‘permanent’ adjective sequences, 12 benchmark items (i.e. items against which the critical ones could be evaluated; see 3.4.3.) made up of different adjective sequences not related to the temporary vs permanent divide, and 24 filler items not related to prenominal modification patterns (see below for detailed illustration of item composition). Both questionnaire versions started out with three fillers and were pseudorandomized in the sequence of items, but did not include more than two items from the same group in succession. Participants received a general oral introduction (without stating the precise research question) as well as a written instruction sheet they were asked to read carefully. After reading the instructions, participants had the chance to ask general comprehension questions. No time limit was set for completing the task, but test subjects were advised to carry out the individual tasks quickly and intuitively – overall, completion time varied between 14 and 21 minutes.

3.4.3 Items and hypotheses ITEMS

All 48 items were composed as follows: First, a context paragraph of two to four sentences introduced a certain situation. Second, directly below said context paragraph, participants were provided with two possible follow-up sentences, i.e. continuations of the provided context, which only differed in word order within one syntactic constituent – for the adjective sequences only in adjective order, i.e. either A1-A2-N or A2-A1-N.61 All items, including fillers and benchmark items, were counterchecked for naturalness of the contexts as well as reading preferences by semi-professional raters at the University of Kassel’s English department. An example item is provided in (181): (181)

Wir hatten früher diese sehr intelligente Frau als Nachbarin, eine Physikprofessorin. Leider sind dann kurz nacheinander ihr Sohn und ihr Mann gestorben. Das hat sie nicht verkraftet und ist seitdem krank, total verrückt.

61 For some filler items, but not for any of the critical items, word order differences were slightly more complex (for example, introducing different phrasal structures).

Questionnaire study I

(a)

Die kranke intelligente Frau musste schließlich in eine Anstalt eingeliefert werden.

(b)

Die intelligente kranke Frau musste schließlich in eine Anstalt eingeliefert werden.62

175

Participants were instructed to distribute exactly 100 points over the two possible follow-up sentences for each item according to which of the two continuations they rated more natural. This 100-split-task (inspired, for example, by the study reported on in Bresnan 2007) accommodates the results of the conducted corpus study in 3.3. above as well as the general hypothesis that adjective order among the central class of adjectives is not driven by core grammatical rules or principles, but more global cognitive scales: in other words, the expectancy for many of the items is not one of clear-cut grammaticality differences, but one of preferences. Picking up this hypothesis, participants were thus given the possibility to rank the suitability of a given discourse continuation relative to a second one, with possible outcomes ranging from absolute preference of sentence (a) over sentence (b) (i.e. a score of 100-to-0), relative preference of (a) over (b) (e.g. 70-to-30), absolute on-a-par-ratings of (a) and (b) (50-to-50) to absolute rejection of (a) relative to (b) (i.e. 0-to-100), as well as any rating in between whose sum amounts to 100. For the critical items, the context paragraph explicitly mentioned the two adjectives in question and determined the intended readings, while the complete DP (i.e. the two adjectives as well as the modified noun) remained the same over both versions.63 The intended readings were brought about by means of lexical disambiguation for items of true polysemy (e.g. dunkel ‘dark’ as either “~of dark color” or as “~not illuminated”). For adjectives displaying the characteristic-vsbehavioral ambiguity, the interpretation in mind was largely evoked by adverbial modification for permanent interpretations (such as durch und durch feige ‘outand-out cowardly’ or stets eifrig ‘always zealous/eager’) and agentive as well as situation-bound contexts for temporary ones (e.g., eifrig zugange sein ‘eagerly being occupied’). The two examples in (182) and (183) below illustrate the item 62 ‘Back in the day, we had this very intelligent woman as a neighbor, a professor of physics. Unfortunately, her son and husband died in quick succession. This broke her and she has been sick ever since, totally crazy. (a) Eventually, the sick intelligent [(b) intelligent sick] woman had to be admitted to an institution.’ 63 To allow for variation and naturalness, however, the DPs in some items differed in case across questionnaire versions A and B, e.g. nominative as opposed to dative. To my knowledge, however, this does not have any bearing on AORs.

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set-up for the adjective stumm ‘mute’ (displaying polysemy in the narrow sense) – including the two provided continuations with the rating boxes arranged directly behind the respective follow-ups – for an IL-/permanent context (reading: ‘unable to speak’) and an SL-/temporary context (reading: ‘quiet/not talking’), respectively (for the full set of critical items used, see App.II). In the questionnaire, the arrangement of the two follow-up sentences was pseudorandomized over items, so that for all item types (SL-/temporary, IL-/permanent, and GH-contexts), word order for the upper continuation, i.e. the (a)-sentences, was A1-A2-N for half of the items in every questionnaire and A2-A1-N for the other half.64 (182)

(183)

IL-/PERMANENT CONTEXT 65 Herr Mayer lebt in einem 500–Seelen Dorf in Oberbayern. Er ist ledig, hat kaum enge Freunde und ist recht einsam. Die Situation des Mannes scheint vor allem einen Grund zu haben: er ist stumm und es gibt in dem Dorf nur eine weitere Person, die die Gebärdensprache beherrscht. (a)

Der stumme ledige Mann fühlt sich mittlerweile aber zu alt für einen Wohnortwechsel.

(b)

Der ledige stumme Mann fühlt sich mittlerweile aber zu alt für einen Wohnortwechsel.

SL-/TEMPORARY CONTEXT 66 Im „Goldenen Krug“, einer echten Berliner Eckkneipe, sitzt ein Mann jeden Abend am gleichen Tisch in der Ecke. Meist isst er eine Kleinigkeit und trinkt 3, 4 Bier, gelegentlich hat er auch Begleitung. Gestern war er aber alleine und hat nur stumm in den Raum geschaut. Der Wirt hat mir mal erzählt, dass der Stammgast ledig sei und auch schon seit Jahren keine Partnerin gehabt hätte. (a)

Der ledige stumme Mann wirkt vielleicht deshalb ein wenig traurig.

(b)

Der stumme ledige Mann wirkt vielleicht deshalb ein wenig traurig.

The second adjective in both these examples, i.e. ledig ‘single’, is conventionally treated as an IL-item (for example, it is odd in predicative use in when64 The underlines below the expressions which differ regarding word order in the (a) and (b)sentences are only included for illustration purposes and were not part of the actual questionnaires distributed to participants. 65 See App.I for translation. 66 See App.I for translation.

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conditionals as well as in perception reports). In example (183), the temporary context, the sentiment that modification by an SL-item occurs outside modification by an IL-item would thus predict that the follow-up sentence in (183b) should receive a higher score than the one in (183a), i.e. be rated as more natural. In turn, no such preferences are predicted for the IL-context in (182), given that both adjectives would be theorized to be of the IL-kind (note that they are also both absolute adjectives). The examples in (184) and (185) illustrate representatives of polysemous items in the broader sense, i.e. interpretational differences are primarily down to the distinction between, on the one hand, a characteristic reading and a behavioral / agentive reading, on the other. In the example items below, the adjective in question is grob ‘rude/rough’, with the intended interpretations being ‘a generally rude person’ for the IL-/permanent context and ‘a person manhandling someone’ for the SL-/temporary context. The respective item setups as well as the general hypothesis regarding the relative placement preferences of the adjectives remain as above: (184) IL-/PERMANENT CONTEXT 67 Dieser Arzt in der Lindenallee, Dr. Schulz, ist einfach ein richtig grober Mensch, immer ruppig im Ton und wenn er mich untersucht, fasst er mich an wie ein Metzger ein Stück Fleisch. Ich gehe aber trotzdem weiter hin, weil er ein ziemlich guter Mediziner ist, sehr klug und mit seinen Diagnosen eigentlich immer treffend. (a) Der grobe kluge Arzt hat mir bisher jedes Mal geholfen. (b) Der kluge grobe Arzt hat mir bisher jedes Mal geholfen. (185) SL-/TEMPORARY CONTEXT 68 Mein Orthopäde ist ja prinzipiell ein guter und einfühlsamer Arzt. Aber als ich letzte Woche da war wegen meines Handgelenks, war er richtig grob, hat mir das Handgelenk verdreht und sogar wehgetan. Er ist natürlich ein kluger Mann und wollte vermutlich nur sehen, ob ich auch wirklich Schmerzen habe. (a)

Ich denke mal, dass Patienten gelegentlich so getestet werden von dem klugen groben Arzt.

(b)

Ich denke mal, dass Patienten gelegentlich so getestet werden von dem groben klugen Arzt.

67 See App.I for translation. 68 See App.I for translation.

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Benchmark items in the questionnaire are referred to as general hierarchy items (GH) and were also sequences of two prenominal adjectives. These sequences, however, did not exploit temporariness contrasts, but were designed along the lines of a diverse range of AORs reported on in the literature (including relative, absolute, as well as relational adjectives; see in particular the clines illustrated in Tab.2) – thus, no two different versions were necessary and the identical 12 GH-items were used in both versions A and B. The benchmark category was essentially identical in set-up to the critical items and included for two purposes: (i) to serve as indicators whether participants were keeping track of the task at hand, i.e. actually rating the provided follow-ups against each other, and (ii) to collect data on a small sample of selected examples that allows for drawing conclusions on AORs from a more general perspective.69 Four of the benchmark items included relational adjectives as one of two adjectives, the other eight items were assembled each from two quality adjectives (for the full set of benchmark items used, see App.II). The example in (186) illustrates the GH-item for the two adjectives breit ‘wide’ and schwarz ‘black’ and the modified noun Regal ‘shelf’. As the item encodes a relative (dimension) and an absolute (color) adjective, respectively, it thus motivates the prediction that (186b) should receive a significantly higher score than (186a): (186) GENERAL HIERARCHY ITEM 70 Wir hatten ja ziemlich lange nach einem Regal fürs Wohnzimmer gesucht und haben jetzt ein tolles gefunden. Schwarz sollte es sein für den Kontrast, weil die anderen Möbel zum großen Teil so hell sind. Außerdem brauchten wir ein ungewöhnlich breites, damit es nicht so verloren in der Ecke steht. (a)

Das schwarze breite Regal von „Möbel Schuhmann“ ist wie gemacht für unser Wohnzimmer.

(b)

Das breite schwarze Regal von „Möbel Schuhmann“ ist wie gemacht für unser Wohnzimmer.

Finally, 24 fillers were included in the task to serve as distractor items, which were superficially designed analogously to the critical and GH-items. Fillers did not involve multiple adnominal modification structures, but exploited word order differences of whole syntactic constituents, lexicalized phrases, or the 69 In fact, motivation (i) is of more importance here, as the sample size was too small and the examples chosen too diverse to draw any firm conclusions on general AORs; see discussion section below. 70 See App.I for translation.

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compound-phrase distinction. While these items were not incorporated in the statistical analysis, semi-professional raters ensured that the relative difference between the continuation sentences were evenly distributed over three categories: grammatically equivalent, relative markedness, and ungrammaticality of one of the follow-up sentences. HYPOTHESES

The hypotheses for this questionnaire study straightforwardly derived from the general sentiment formulated in (122), the general theories on AORs, and the data from the corpus study in 3.3. The first hypothesis in (187) again is the null hypothesis underlying statistical analysis, while the second hypothesis in (188) addresses the assumption that questionnaire participants manifest order preferences for polysemous adjectives that can be credited with the temporariness parameter. Finally, the third hypothesis in (189) captures the idea that AORs are at play for the GH-items, as partly established in the corpus study above, but do not include temporariness as a substantial factor. (187) HYP 0 – NULL HYPOTHESIS Neither the critical items nor the GH-items show any kind of preferences as regards the internal order of adjectives. (188) HYP I – TEMPORARY READINGS ARE IN TENDENCY ENCODED FARTHER FROM THE MODIFIED ELEMENT

Given that adjective order within the qualitative layer is relatively free from a grammatical perspective, we expect temporary polysemes to feature outside of the second adjective encoding a permanent property ascription. The respective counterparts, viz. the ‘permanent polysemes’, are hypothesized to not display this kind of preference regarding their relative order with the respective second adjective. Mean scores for the SL-/ temporary condition are expected to be higher than mean scores for the IL-/permanent condition. (189) HYP II – GH-ITEMS ARE SUBJECT TO AORs, CRITICAL ITEMS ARE NOT AORs are only at play for the heterogeneous class of GH-items, in particular regarding the relative-absolute divide and the particular case of relational adjectives. No difference is expected for critical items over the two conditions.

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3.4.4 Results GENERAL RESULTS

All statistical analyses were carried out with SPSS software (IBM SPSS package Statistics 22). Tab.8 and Fig.4 summarize the mean scores for the critical items (termed ‘SL’ for stage-level and ‘IL’ for individual-level here, respectively, for reasons of brevity) as well as the GH-items. Note that all scores listed here refer to the score of only one of two possible answers, namely the one in which the ambiguous adjective is realized as the second of two adjectives, which – following the general hypothesis that temporary property concepts are encoded farther from the noun – should be the one unexpected in SL-contexts. Thus, for all SL-/ temporary contexts, the rating for the unexpected option was recorded (AxAyN) and is juxtaposed here to the score for the same adjective order for the respective IL-/permanent contexts (again AxAyN). Expectancies for GH-items follow the reasoning along the lines of (189) and Tab.2. The analysis is not affected by this choice as the respective counterparts’ means can be computed straightforwardly as the differences between the mean scores listed here and the 100 points distributed over the two follow-ups for each item. Crucially, however, this reasoning entails that lower means for the SL-group are tantamount to a higher preference of the expected answers. Table 8: Overall mean scores for the expected answers of the item categories ‘SL’, ‘IL’, and ‘GH’. item class

mean score

SL-/temporary (SL)

~49.60

IL-/permanent (IL)

~47.45

general hierarchy (GH)

~63.15

As can be gathered from Tab.8 as well as Fig.4, we find a minimal mean difference between the two groups of critical items. Being normally distributed, independent two-sample t-tests were performed for item as well as subject means to evaluate the relation between the SL- and IL-groups. No statistically significant difference between the two groups was found, neither between items nor between subjects – Tab.9 itemizes the t-test results:71

71 See the Zusatzinformationen under http://www.degruyter.com/view/product/472464 for the complete SPSS output for the t-tests.

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Table 9: Independent t-tests for subject and item means for the two groups SL and IL. statistics mean type

means and standard deviation

t-test

subject means

SL (M = 49.54, SD = 9.39) IL (M = 47.44, SD = 8.04)

t(56) = –.914, p = .365

item means

SL (M = 49.65, SD = 10.87) IL (M = 47.46, SD = 10.76)

t(22) = –.499, p = .623

Figure 4: Overall mean scores: expected answers of critical and benchmark items.

Thus, no overall preferences were found for adjective placement that could be attributed to the temporary-permanent divide. As indicated by the illustrations in Tab.8 and Fig.4, however, the GH-group appears to stand out relative to the SL- and IL-means. An ANOVA was calculated to allow for multiple comparisons between these three groups and, in particular, the relative mean differences between GH and IL as well as GH and SL, respectively. The analysis was significant: – Subject means: F(2, 84) = 29.58, p < .001 – Item means: F(2, 33) = 6.16, p = .005 As expected given the above t-tests, post-hoc tests (Tukey HSD) for subject as well as item means revealed a non-significant relation between the IL- and SLgroups. In contrast, the relation between both these groups and GH-items, respectively, was significant. Post-hoc across-group comparisons are summarized in Tab.10 (for IL-and SL-means as well as standard deviations, see Tab.9 above):72 72 See the Zusatzinformationen under http://www.degruyter.com/view/product/472464 for the complete SPSS output for the ANOVA.

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Table 10: Post-hoc results (Tukey HSD) of the ANOVA for multiple group (IL, SL, and GH) comparisons. mean type

comparisons

mean diff. / significance

subject means

GH (M = 63.15, SD = 1.45) GH-IL GH-SL IL-SL

diff. = 15.70, p < .001 diff. = 13.61, p < .001 diff. = –2.10, p = .613

GH (M = 63.15, SD = 3.96) GH-IL GH-SL IL-SL

diff. = 15.69, p = .007 diff. = 13.49, p = .023 diff. = –2.20, p = .893

item means

INDIVIDUAL ITEMS ANALYSIS FOR CRITICAL AND BENCHMARK ITEMS

The analysis of individual items provides a fairly non-uniform picture in terms of the IL-SL-comparison. Three adjective combinations exhibit a significantly higher score for the unexpected answer in the SL-condition than in the ILcondition (dick-ruhig, höflich-feige, and schön-wild), while participants rated only two combinations (dunkel-groß and ledig-stumm) in the IL-condition better than in the respective SL-condition and thus followed the reasoning along the lines of hypothesis II in (188). Most other items cluster around the 50-pointsmark in both conditions, while two items obtained a score significantly below chance in both conditions (böse-behaart and geschickt-vornehm). Fig.5 shows the mean distributions for the critical items in both conditions – crucially, the figure only compares means across questionnaire versions and the scores displayed refer to the same adjective order across questionnaires, i.e. irrespective of the kind of context initiating it (see the discussion below). Within the GH-group, viz. the benchmark items, the overall significantly higher mean scores across groups have to be attributed primarily to the four items including relational adjectives (see the black bars in Fig.6 below). No significant effects can be read off for items including absolute adjectives (gray bars) or items composed of relative adjectives (white bars), which cluster around the 50–points-mark. Disregarding relational adjectives, the mean score for expected answers amounts to a mere 55.129. Thus, their relative order can be considered fairly arbitrary according to participants’ judgements (the scores in Fig.6 refer to the orders provided in the labels on the x-axis).

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Figure 5: Mean comparisons across the conditions IL (gray) and SL (black) for individual critical items.

Figure 6: Means of individual GH-items, class-divided into those including one relational adjective (black), those including at least one absolute adjective (gray), and those including two relative adjectives (white).

3.4.5 Discussion First, HYP 0, see (187), must be rejected. While no overall significant effect for ordering preferences was found for the IL-SL-alternation between items, expected answers for the GH-group received significantly higher scores. In consequence,

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HYP I

as formulated in (188) is not corroborated, while HYP II as formulated in (189) is at least partially borne out: – The disambiguation of polysemous items along the lines of their temporary or permanent application via prior contextual information does not affect adjective order (at least given the questionnaire set-up used here) – Overall, the GH-group items’ expected answers were rated significantly higher than both SL-/temporary and IL-/permanent items’ (expected) answers. However, this finding is primarily down to the inclusion of four relational adjectives (italienisch, französisch, ledern, and Münchner), while the other eight GH-items contribute only minimally to the overall effect As regards the individual items among the IL-SL-group, no self-evident trends can be discerned. As mentioned above, it is important to note for the illustration in Fig.5 that the respective two bars for any individual item compare means across the two questionnaire versions. In other words, a seemingly distinct mean difference must always be counterchecked against the intra-item difference. For example, the item feig-höflich-Rentner (see item (8) in App.II(i)) received the mean scores illustrated in (190a/b): (190)

a.

b.

SL-/TEMPORARY CONTEXT (i) Der feige höfliche Rentner (expected)

score: 45.00

(ii) Der höfliche feige Rentner (unexpected)

score: 55.00 (rec.)73

IL-/PERMANENT CONTEXT (i) Der höfliche feige Rentner (no expectation)

score: 36.00 (rec.)

(ii) Der feige höfliche Rentner (no expectation)

score: 64.00

Thus, while Fig.5 as well as the statistical analyses only compare the second line of (190a), i.e. a mean score of 55.00, to the first line of (190b), i.e. a mean score of 36.00, the expected answer’s score for the SL-/temporary context remains implicit – here, 45.00. Crucially, however, comparing the expected answer’s score of the SL-context in (190ai) to the same adjective order in the IL-context in (190bii) shows that the prediction that temporary property modifiers are encoded farther from the noun than permanent ones is not borne out for the item in (190). The same holds for all items except for dunkel-groß-Haus and stumm-ledig-Mann (see items (6) and (9) in App.II(i), respectively). Interestingly, 73 ‘rec.’, i.e. ‘recorded’, stands for the value that has been used for statistical analyses – given that for each item exactly 100 points had to be distributed over two possible continuations, only one value had to be recorded.

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these two items display true polysemy, as opposed to the ones that were designed along the lines of the agentive-characteristic-dichotomy, for neither of which such an effect can be read off from the ratings. On the other hand, we do not find any such effect for the other three narrowly polysemous items krank– intelligent– Frau, wild–schön–Tier, and klar–breit–Scheibe (see items (1), (5), and (12) in App.II(i), respectively). Thus, once again, no clear indications are being found that would justify affirmative conclusions as regards the general sentiment in (122) stating the relative order of temporary and permanent adnominal adjectives to follow the ‘temporary >> permanent >> noun’-pattern. Moreover, the mean scores for items from the GH-group largely substantiate the findings from the corpus study in 3.3. The only items showing clear-cut acceptability preferences are the ones featuring relational adjectives, including material and ethnic adjectives, as well as an adjectival form of a city name (ledern, italienisch, französisch, and Münchner; see items (6), (10), (2), and (5) in App.II(ii), respectively). All of these received significantly higher scores in the follow-up options that placed the relational adjective in closer proximity to the noun. All other GH-items cluster around the 50-point mark. Tellingly, and contrary to expectations as well as the corpus study, even the item breitschwarz-Regal (no.(3) App.II(ii)) was only marginally preferred in the order relative (dimension) preceding absolute (color) adjective at 58.10 points, while the strongest effect was yielded for schön-heiß-Sommer (no.(1) App.II(ii)) at 64.66 points – featuring two relative adjectives in this very order. In particular the ratings for the remaining five combinations of two relative adjectives did not manifest striking preferences, casting further doubt on very fine-grained adjective sequences along the lines of, for example, Sproat & Shih (1988; 1991) or Scott (2002); see Tab.2. The item eckig-grün-Spielbrett (see no.(9) App.II(ii)), featuring two absolute adjectives, was even slightly preferred in its putatively non-canonical order with a color adjective preceding a shape adjective. Three possible caveats concerning the general design of the study deserve mention. First, while not an online study, the role of polysemy and how it is represented mentally is contested for experimental settings. There is evidence that, in particular, in the realm of adjectives core meanings are always represented and narrowed down upon contextual disambiguation (cf. Mullaly et al. 2010). It is not clear to which degree the representation of the non-intended readings for respective adjectives may have influenced ratings. Second, the adjective sequences in the follow-up sentences are in fact not cases of restrictive modification, given that the DPs in question are topical. While it is not quite clear to what extent restrictivity is a prerequisite for AORs to hold (cf. the discussion in 3.2.1. above), both adjectives as well as the head noun are explicitly mentioned in the context paragraphs. Neither are new referents introduced in

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the follow-ups nor do the continuations disambiguate potential referents introduced in the context paragraphs. While the respective adjective sequences were all spelt without commas to inhibit comma intonation, it is unclear in how far this design may have influenced the outcome. However, the overall scores yielded by the benchmark items indicate that AORs take effect irrespective of the design, at least for items including relational adjectives. Third, the design crucially relied upon careful reading of the context paragraphs on the part of the test subjects in order to detect the intended interpretational differences of the property concepts as either holding temporarily or permanently. While the importance of paying close attention to the introductory contexts was stressed in both the written and the oral introductions, ‘fulfilling’ the immediate task of rating the two follow-up sentences was in principle possible without prior exposure to a context. As no comprehension question relating to the context paragraph was posed, it cannot be ruled out that (some) participants took this shortcut. For those who did, in turn, the first caveat mentioned above – non-restrictivity – can be excluded as a factor influencing rating behavior, since in this case the DP referents consequently would not have been introduced.

3.5 Chapter summary and assessment This chapter has argued for a DP-configuration in which attributive quality adjectives are located in specifier-positions of functional agreement heads (AgrDP), i.e. in between D and the NP proper. Upon briefly reviewing alternative approaches, I have followed Sternefeld (2008) on grounds of the distribution of adjectival complements as well as feature checking mechanisms. In light of the empirical arguments in the subsequent sections, however, a further assumed advantage of the SpecFP-approach – the presumably rigid order of prenominal adjectives – cannot be upheld. Merely in terms of AORs, adjunction approaches (be it to NP, N’, or nP) are certainly capable of accounting for the data equally well. Narrowing the scope of investigation to hierarchical, individual-modifying adjective sequences, I have argued against too fine-grained property classes as an adequate basis for restrictions on prenominal adjective order. It has been shown that multiple quality adjectives, viz. the core and most prototypical subclass of adjectives, empirically do not allow for syntactic implementations in which assumed clines of notional classes – such as QUALITY, SIZE , or COLOR – project their own FP. While there is, at the same time, a myriad of data suggesting these very class hierarchies to exist, their grammatical basis has been called into question, essentially claiming the reverse of Scott’s (2002: 97) research mantra, according to which “conjectures as to the psycholinguistic motivation

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187

for AOR need not be posed: AOR fall out as a direct consequence of UG.” Although this study does not offer a comprehension/production model of AORs itself, answers to this end are most likely to be found on the basis of frequency data. Further approaches to AORs have been introduced, with in particular the absolute-relative-divide offering a linguistic correlate of more global answers to the question of AORs such as objectivity. As no hard and fast grammatical rule has emerged, however, attempts at syntactically laying down AORs for the class of quality adjectives have been shown to undergenerate. The corpus study in 3.3. has put the unclear preferred location of temporary (SL-) adjectives to the test, finding that they behave inconspicuously. Given that the items used are absolute gradable adjectives (as established in ch.2), their rough clustering after relative adjectives follows principles that are more general than their presumable membership in a class of temporary adjectives. Statistically, however, they also precede the class labeled ABS PERM, a finding which may well be attributed to the preponderance of color terms in this class. Crucially, if anything, core SL-adjectives occupy central positions in between two large classes of what would be IL-adjectives. An interesting pattern concerns age adjectives, one subclass of relative adjectives, which exhibit deviant behavior and thus to a degree distort the neat statistical pattern of relative >> absolute. Recourse to ‘conceptual iconicity’ in the sense of Bouchard (2002; 2011) suggests itself as an explanation in this regard. Finally, relational adjectives have been identified as the only group of expressions that can be granted a rule-like distribution, a finding corroborated by the questionnaire study in 3.4. In combination, the discussion of adjective-location within DP-structure in 3.1., the data discussed in 3.2.2., and the corpus study reported on in 3.3. suggest the parsimonious syntactic structure for (multiple) modification via quality adjectives in (129) above (repeated here in modified form as (191)) to be on the right track. Its inherent flexibility does justice to the apparent lack of full-fledged grammatical / UG principles in the order of quality adjectives as well as allows for in principle unlimited stacking or iteration. The dotted additions of a relativeabsolute-bipartition merely reflect the robust statistical generalization found and are not to be understood as grammatical principles per se in the sense of, for example, Svenonius (2008). The data do circumvent this bipartition and thus do not seem to easily warrant a functional projection that could be identified as its locus. Crucially, following this configuration, the typical SL-adjective as defined in 2.3. and made use of in 3.3. can be argued to in fact follow a large class of what are often understood as IL-adjectives, viz. relative adjectives, with statistical normality.

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(191)

The questionnaire study in 3.4. has tested the behavior of adjectives that are polysemous / ambiguous with respect to temporariness – namely, i) the divide between agentive and characteristic readings of evaluatives and ii) a group of items that can be argued to display polysemy in a stricter sense, yet also is directly connected to questions of typical temporariness. Given different contextual environments that could be hypothesized to have a bearing on adjective order in an across-questionnaire-versions design, no influence to this end has been found for these items. A group of contextually fixed, i.e. non-alternating across versions, benchmark items is statistically significant – however, deducting the contribution of the relational adjectives made use of renders the statistics insignificant.

Chapter 4

Layered adjective order and genericity Ch.3 has ended on a structure that locates German attributive quality adjectives in AgrDPs in between D and NP. As the attested data do not seem to allow for concretely specifying rigid orders between property concepts, these FPs remain noncommittal as regards notional classes. While the hazy principle of ‘conceptual iconicity’ (see 3.2.1.) has been argued suitable as an explanation for at least some recurring patterns, the data discussed in fact only covered object-referring DPs and the modification of individuals. Thus, the distinction between IL and SL has essentially been restricted to Carlson’s (1980) level of objects. Although the corpus study in 3.3. has shown that relational adjectives follow the input adjectives used there without exception, no claims with regard to their structural positions have been made. The same holds for phrasal names1 and modifiers argued to modify kinds rather than individuals. This final chapter deals with some of the questions neglected thus far. It is structured as follows: 4.1. provides a cursory overview of genericity and the distinction between characterizing sentences and kind-referring NPs. Paving the way back to AORs, 4.1.2. and 4.1.3. discuss the notions of ‘well-establishedness’ and ‘concept’, respectively, while 4.1.4. argues for a general split between DP and NP and the respective modifiers located there. 4.2. discusses two particular approaches, Larson (1998) and Cinque (2010), which make use of two-layered systems of modification. As established in 4.2.1., both work on, roughly, the same data patterns (including alleged SL-IL-alternations) and have many theoretical commonalities as well as a couple of differences (4.2.2.). Potential challenges and alternative explanations to Larson and Cinque are discussed in 4.2.3. Lastly, the chapter reports on a second questionnaire study that makes use of German – bar-adjectives and possible interpretational preferences along the lines of genericity and temporary as well as permanent readings.

4.1 Modifiers applying to kinds 4.1.1 Genericity As shown by the discussion in Krifka et al. (1995),2 the benchmark publication from a formal perspective, genericity or reference to kinds in natural language 1 These were also excluded from the corpus search (see 3.3.3.). 2 This subchapter borrows heavily from Krifka et al. (1995) and I will not provide a reference for every thought taken over from there.

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Layered adjective order and genericity

is a multifaceted phenomenon (see also the overview in Carlson 2011). The most general distinction usually made is one between ‘characterizing sentences’ (also ‘I-generics’ or ‘habituals’) and ‘kind-referring NPs/DPs’ (also ‘D-generics’).3 Characterizing sentences are abstractions away from or generalizations over particular situation or events, while kind-referring NPs are abstractions away from or generalizations over particular objects. The examples in (192) and (193) illustrate the difference, while (194) shows that the two can co-occur (kindreferring NPs are underlined): (192)

(193)

(194)

CHARACTERIZING SENTENCES

a.

Peter drinks a lot of coffee.

b.

John smokes a cigar after lunch.

KIND - REFERRING

a.

NPS Dinosaurs are extinct.

b.

Konrad Zuse invented the Z1 computer.

CO - OCCURRENCE

Z1 computers get hot after running for more than three hours. In sentences such as (192), standardly some kind of generic operator is assumed that turns a particular predicate into a characterizing one. The discussion in this chapter, however, will largely be restricted to kind-referring NPs.4 The primary reason for this neglect is that characterizing sentences do not appear to inform AORs. In Krifka et al. (1995), (192a/b) are both abstractions over recurring events and their participants, with the complete sentences contributing to the generic reading. Peter obviously does not have to drink coffee at all times, or the time of utterance, to make the sentence true. While it may affect the sentences’ truths, modification in the respective DPs is in principle possible with quality/relational 3 The terms I- and D-generics refer to indefinite and definite, respectively, and derive from the most typical morphosyntactic guise in which characterizing sentences and kind-referring NPs occur (cf. e.g. Link 1995). In the remainder, I will use the term kind-referring NP and drop the DP-part. 4 In particular, I will not address the issue of what it takes for generic sentences to be felicitous. Thus, for example, I will have nothing to say about the apparent differences in acceptability between Cars have radios. and ?Canadians are right-handed. I will also not go into any detail with respect to which kinds of DPs allow for which kinds of generic reference; see Carlson (2011), Krifka et al. (1995), and Mueller-Reichau (2006) for formal semantic approaches and, for example, Prasada et al. (2013) for an overview from a conceptually based perspective.

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adjectives of any kind as in (195) and the sentence as a whole will abstract over these. In turn, this does not have any bearing on DPs with multiple attributive adjectives and questions of order as in (196): (195)

John smokes a big / heavy / Cuban cigar after lunch.

(196)

a.

John smokes a big heavy Cuban cigar after lunch.

b.

*/?John smokes a heavy big cigar after lunch.

c.

*John smokes a Cuban heavy cigar after lunch.

4.1.2 Well-establishedness Turning to kind-referring NPs, the DPs dinosaurs and the Z1 computer in (193a/b) do not refer to particular objects (such as a concrete group of dinosaurs or the one Z1 in someone’s office), but address the kinds as such. These readings are enforced by the so-called kind-selecting predicates be extinct and invent, respectively, which do not allow for object-reference (cf. Carlson 1980; see also 2.1.2.1.). As touched upon in ch.2, kinds are often understood as a fundamental ontological or sortal category capable of being referred to. As shown in (193b), reference to kinds in natural language is not restricted to ‘natural kinds’ in the sense of biological genera (cf. Carlson 2011: 1181).5 Furthermore, (193b) and (194) illustrate that complex NPs (a compound here) can also be kind-referring in that they address a particular subkind of the kind denoted by the head. As shown in (197), not only compounds but also AN-phrases can be kind-referring:6 (197)

a.

Rote Grütze ist weit verbreitet in der norddeutschen Küche. ‘Rote Grütze is widespread in Northern German cuisine.’

b.

Das gelbe Trikot wurde 1919 bei der Tour de France eingeführt. ‘The yellow jersey was introduced in 1919 at the Tour de France.’7

5 The fact that DPs can make reference to kinds at all is certainly to be found in the nature of nouns and their ontological as well conceptual status in the mental lexicon. Thus, for example, Dölling (1992) and Krifka (1995) argue for the plausible assumption that kinds have ontological primacy over their particular object realizations, which have for means of cognitive identification and, linguistically, naming always to take recourse to the kind they realize (cf. e.g. the remarks in Dölling 1992: §2.3 and Krifka 1995: 399; for an opposing view, see e.g. Chiercha 1998). 6 By virtue of adjectival agreement, using a German example circumvents the notorious difficulties in clearly setting apart AN-phrases from AN-compounds in English. 7 On the assumption that einführen ‘to introduce’ is kind-selecting.

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Layered adjective order and genericity

While one may argue that the yellow jersey is not, strictly speaking, a subkind of jerseys,8 these underlined DPs are clear-cut cases of lexicalized AN-phrases or phrasal names in German (cf. e.g. Schlücker 2014: ch.6), which is important insofar as not just any AN-phrase is felicitous in generic sentences. Krifka et al.’s (1995: 11) test for distinguishing object- from kind-referring NPs puts a wellestablishedness constraint on the latter. The authors assess that to feature as a kind-referring NP, the “noun or complex nominal constituent must be semantically connected with a ‘well-established’ kind to which the noun phrase then can refer.” For English singular definite NPs, a difference along these lines is attested for (198a/b), in which Coke bottles are considered well-established and thus possible kind-referrers, whereas non-established green bottles are not (adopted from ibid.):9 (198)

a.

The Coke bottle has a narrow neck.

b.

?The

green bottle has a narrow neck.

The relationship between lexicalization of AN-phrases and kinds, in particular with respect to mutual dependencies and the question which of the two has primacy over the other, is far from trivial and I will not address the issue further (see e.g. Härtl 2015 for some of the intricacies). Suffice it to say, if the noun in question has not undergone a metaphorical shift, any lexicalized AN-phrase will be a well-established subkind of the kind denoted by the head noun. Thus, it will function as a complex common name and, for example, pass ‘sogenanntTests’ (‘so-called tests’) as in (199) (cf. Härtl 2015; Gunkel & Zifonun 2009; Schlücker & Hüning 2009): (199)

a.

sogenannte Rote Grütze

‘so-called Rote Grütze’

b.

das sogenannte gelbe Trikot

‘the so-called yellow jersey’

c.

*/?eine

‘a so-called green bottle’

sogenannte grüne Flasche

8 As remarked by one reviewer. The issue is not as clear-cut, I believe – we may well buy a yellow jersey, i.e. a replica of the Tour de France leader’s jersey, on a street market, which may then be referred to via “Look, I’ve bought the / a yellow jersey”. We may also speak of yellow jerseys in the plural as in Lance Armstrong’s defiant Twitter photo shows him relaxing with seven yellow jerseys (http://www.usatoday.com/story/gameon/2012/11/12/lance-armstrongyellow-jerseys-picture/1699693/ [accessed February 2016]). 9 A different test for well-establishedness exploits the taxonomic reading of indefinite singular DPs in combination with kind-selecting predicates (see e.g. Mueller-Reichau 2006: §5.8.).

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Further well-known reflexes are that the AN-cluster is virtually inseparable if it is to retain its subkind-reading – neither can the adjective be used predicatively (see (200a)), other adjectives intervene (see (200b)), nor can the adjective be coordinated with modifiers that do not themselves establish subkinds in a distributive DP (see (200c)): (200) a. Das Trikot is gelb.

‘The jersey is yellow.’

b. das gelbe gestreifte Trikot

‘the yellow striped jersey’

c. die gestreiften und gelben Trikots

‘the striped and yellow jerseys’

d. die gepunkteten und gelben Trikots ‘the polka dot and yellow jerseys’ While all grammatical, neither of (200a–c) can refer to the yellow jersey awarded to the Tour de France leader. As pointed out above, gelbes Trikot in the intended reading is a phrasal name or lexicalized phrase and as such it is subject to some form of the lexical integrity principle (cf. Anderson 1992; Booij 2009). Although the principle’s primary applicability is usually argued for in the realms of the morphology-syntax- or word-phrase-divides, it may well be necessary to extend it to the opposition of lexicalized and non-lexicalized constructions, be they words or larger expressions (cf. e.g. Gaeta 2012).10 Coming back to the examples in (200), in distributive DPs in which both modifiers stand in (distinct) subkind relations with the noun, as in (200d),11 reference to the kind is possible again. Note that, given their rigidity with respect to AORs, lexicalized AN-phrases have been subject to data cleansing in the corpus study (see 3.3.3.). Their peculiar behavior is reminiscent of relational adjectives, which have been argued to be inherent classifiers in 1.2.2.3., although their status as lexicalized expressions, and thus names, is not as clear-cut as for quality adjectives (cf. Gunkel & Zifonun 2009).12 Again, with respect to AORs, quality adjectives 10 Two of the most prominent ingredients of the lexical integrity principle are the non-accessibility of word-internal structures and the non-interruptibility of words (or, in the extended view, of lexicalized expressions) (cf. Booij 2009). In particular, violations of the latter constraint can be argued to be at play not only in compounds but also in the examples (200a/b), in which the predicative structure and the second adjective gestreift, respectively, intervene with or break up the lexicalized cluster gelb_Trikot. In turn, the principle must be formulated in a way that allows for syntactic reflexes such as weak/strong declension (see 3.1.) or case marking, e.g. des gelben Trikots ‘theGEN yellowGEN jerseyGEN’. 11 The polka dot jersey is awarded to the winner of the Mountains classification in stage races such as the Tour de France. 12 Clearly, AN-syntagms with relational adjectives can but need not to be well-established to classify. Thus, unlike nukleare Waffen ‘nuclear weapons’ or soziale Marktwirtschaft ‘social market economy’, for example, städtischer Hafen ‘municipal harbor’ or Indian government are not necessarily established as complex concepts or kinds, yet are still classifying.

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Layered adjective order and genericity

can neither easily intervene between a relational adjective and the noun as in (201a) nor can the two be coordinated (201b): (201)

a.

*an urban nice park

(cf. a nice urban park)

b.

*a nice and urban park

(*an urban and nice park)

The general consensus with respect to subkind-referring NPs is that the kind-/ sub-kind-relation will be taxonomically represented for the head noun as hyperonym-hyponym relations in a speaker’s mental lexicon (cf. Krifka et al. 1995: §1.3.3.; Mueller-Reichau 2006: §3.3.). (202)

TAXONOMY OF (SUB - )KINDS

I will not dwell on what constitutes well-establishedness13 per se and the questionnaire study in 4.3. will not directly incorporate but deal with it as a gradual rather than absolute phenomenon. Yet, the tentative treatment in the literature is one in which speaker and hearer are in a priori agreement that a collection of objects should be pooled under a common label (see e.g. Mueller-Reichau 2006: 87–88). A (sub-)kind can thus be defined along the lines of Krifka as: »[. . .] abstract entities that are well established in the background knowledge of speaker and hearer and can be referred to by definite NPs like the bear, which were [sic] in the extension of kind predicates like be extinct or be a mammal, and which were [sic] organized in taxonomic hierarchies.« (Krifka 1995: 402)

Crucially, as argued in ch.1, the cases discussed in this section are referencemodifying, viz. intervening in the nominal reference system and not modifying individuals directly. While typical SL-adjectives are obviously not banned as the first elements of well-established subkinds (or names), they are very rare and will typically have undergone metaphorical shifts as in (203a), modify deverbal 13 Neither do, for example, Krifka et al. (1995), who claim the phenomenon to be real and obvious enough, yet admit to lacking an adequate explanation (cf. ibid.: 11, fn.9; 13, fn.10).

Modifiers applying to kinds

195

nouns as in (203b), or lack in change potential with respect to the property in question as in (203c): (203)

a.

tired light

b.

naked hiker

c.

naked mole rat

In particular, widening the scope and including deverbal/eventive head nouns into the investigation may well allow for by far more SL-adjectives to generically or kind-modify. While not pursued in this book, we may then expect to find a multitude of DPs in which a SL-adjective is found in closer proximity to the noun than established in the corpus study in 3.3.14 4.1.3 Concepts and kinds Based on scope relations of classifiers (CL) in Chinese, Krifka (1995) argues for the existence of ‘concepts’, an ontological notion broader than kinds.15 Giving kinds ontological priority over object realizations (see 4.1.4.), (certain) CLs are necessary to derive an object-referring noun from its underlying kind.16 Consider (204), adopted from (Krifka 1995: 402), with SUB marking a subordinator/relative clause marker: (204)

a.

nèi that

wèi CL

[chuân wear

lán blue

yîfu clothing

de] SUB

b.

[chuân lán yîfu de] nèi wèi wear blue clothing SUB that CL ‘that gentleman who is wearing blue clothing’

xiânsheng gentleman xiânsheng gentleman

14 As pointed out by one reviewer, minimal pairs such as i) and ii) show that blind reliance on adjective classes is not revealing as regards AORs (in line with this book’s overall argument): i) a. eine feuchte teure Jacke b. ?eine teure feuchte Jacke ‘an expensive wet jacket’ ii) a. ?eine feuchte teure Reinigung b. eine teure feuchte Reinigung ‘an expensive moist cleaning’ 15 I will stick to putting ‘concept’ in quotation marks, given the different uses in principle applicable to it. Thus, if I understand Krifka correctly, ‘concept’ is not to be taken as the mere mental representation of the descriptive meaning of any content word (cf. e.g. Löbner 2002), but in crucially classifying function. Therefore, it should also follow that ‘concepts’ have to be linguistically complex (for example, modified), as any simplex common noun, according to Krifka, will be stored as a kind as such in the mental lexicon. 16 This is obviously simplifying things considerably; for the classifier-system Krifka assumes, see (ibid.: 398–401). On classifiers and DP-structure in general, see also Svenonius (2008).

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Layered adjective order and genericity

Both examples in (204a/b) are object-referring. In (204b), the adjunct in square brackets restrictively modifies a predicative noun and the latter has already combined with CL. Krifka’s reason for introducing ‘concepts’ is the case in (204a), in which the adjunct modifies a kind-referring noun and the CL has scope over the large constituent, roughly, [gentleman wearing blue clothes]. Thus, at least for the Chinese case, this constitutes a problem for the well-establishedness constraint to kinds: Formally, (204a) describes a kind [gentleman wearing blue clothes] turned into an object-referring NP afterwards. This ‘kind’, however, will hardly be regarded as represented in the common background knowledge of speaker and hearer. Retaining well-establishedness as a condition for kind-hood, Krifka understands ‘concepts’ as the superset and kinds as a subset thereof. Thus, kinds are also ‘concepts’, but (complex) ‘concepts’ need not be established in the same way or to the same degree, can also show off weaker degrees of classification, or be established ad-hoc.17 The transfer to AORs in this respect is supplied by Bouchard, explicitly referring to Krifka’s ‘concept’ in Bouchard (2011) and implicitly in Bouchard’s (2002) notion ‘class’. He assumes a gradual transition from ‘concept’ to kind and, with respect to AORs, states: »[N]ot all individual concepts are kinds: only those that identify classes of objects with a sufficiently regular function qualify, and this is determined by the shared knowledge of a community of speakers [. . .]. Any collection of properties can define a class: socks that have been worn over a week, red cars with grey interior that don’t work well in freezing conditions, and so on. A class of objects will be considered to form a natural kind if its function is one salient enough in the community that it is worth being stabilized, conventionalized. [. . .] In short, the naturalness of the order in the serialization of ADJs may correspond to the naturalness of the classes being formed: the more natural the class, the earlier the ADJ is merged with N.« (Bouchard 2002: 120–121; italics in the original)

While there is no direct equivalent in non-classifier languages, the reasoning seems to be as follows: If [socks that have been worn over a week] are sufficiently often spoken about as a class (or Krifka’s ‘concept’) they will tend toward kind-hood. The more often an AN-phrase is used in this way, the more likely it will feature as A2 in an A1-A2-N-phrase.18 Again, lexicalized AN-phrases as well 17 While I will not further pursue this thought, ‘concept’ conceived of in this way would also apply to cases, in which a discourse-relevant ad-hoc class is isolated and any adjective can be fronted with focus stress; see 2.2.1. 18 Obviously, the same applies to the second adjective in any AAN-phrase – thus, it is relative tending toward kindhood that will influence the order as A1-A2 or A2-A1. While the reasoning certainly has its merits, as, for example, reflected by the peculiar behavior of age adjectives and person nouns in the corpus study in 3.3., it certainly is not sufficient as the sole predictor. The influence of clearly established adjective classes is evidence to the contrary (see ch.3).

Modifiers applying to kinds

197

as relational adjectives fit the pattern, the former by lexicalization as a kind, the latter by inherent classification.

4.1.4 The structural position of kind modifiers In ch.3, all quality adjectives have been represented in FPs in between D and NP, neglecting relational adjectives as well as lexicalized AN-phrases. As seen in 3.2., many descriptive AOR-models, for example, the ones of Rijkhoff (2003; 2010) or Eichinger (1992), include classifying layers to, in particular, accommodate relational adjectives. A nowadays fairly common view has it that NPs are the locus of kind (or type) information, while DPs refer to individuals (or tokens), realizing the kind in NP (for a general overview, see Carlson 2003). Assuming the DP-hypothesis, a piece of evidence is provided in (205) (adapted from Carlson 2003: 303): (205)

[DP Several [NP bearsj]] were seen at the campground. Theyj are common in mountainous areas.

Here, the anaphoric pronoun refers back to the kind realized within an individualdenoting DP, not the DP as such (i.e. not the several bears). Carlson takes it as evidence that kinds are still realized despite being embedded in a DP with argument status. If it is NP that has kinds as denotations, the claim can be made for an available antecedent present in the discourse. Another example in (206) is found in Vergnaud & Zubizarreta (1992: 596) for contrasts in inalienable possessive DPs between French and English ((206a/b) adopted from ibid): (206)

a.

Les enfants ont levé la main.

b.

The children raised the hand.

c.

Die Kinder haben die Hand gehoben.

The French example is ambiguous between an alienable reading, in which the children raised some, say, plastic hand, and an inalienable reading, in which each child raised his/her hand. English lacks this second reading, making available only the interpretation on which the hand referred to is not part the children’s bodies.19 Vergnaud & Zubizarreta’s more particular argument includes 19 In principle, the German example in (206c) clusters with French. The situation is further complicated, though, because the alienable reading is, although available, difficult to get. More commonly, the particle verbs aufheben ‘~to pick up’ or hochheben ‘to lift up’ would be used for the alienable reading.

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Layered adjective order and genericity

the status of the definite determiner in French, either as an expletive or a DET proper. Yet, connected to this question are their more general claims regarding the connection between DP and NP as well as their respective denotations. In the French inalienable reading, NP is taken to denote a type (the determiner being an expletive), while in the alienable reading (the only one available in English) it is DP denoting a token. Argued to have no inherent reference (which can only be provided by determiners; see the discussion in Alexiadou et al. 2007: 79–89 as well as Higginbotham 1985 for this view), for a type in NP to be associated with a concrete object in the world, it needs DP as a mediator. Vergnaud & Zubizarreta (1992: 612) formulate two principles in this regard: (207)

INSTANTIATION PRINCIPLE

Instantiation is a primitive relation between tokens and types in domain D. Each token is an instantiation of some type. (208)

CORRESPONDENCE LAW

When a DP or an NP denotes, the DP denotes a token and the NP denotes a type. I will largely remain agnostic as to the structural position or functional element responsible for turning types into tokens, with many different proposals available.20 Given these principles, however, any linguistically complex expression that constitutes a (well-established) kind or includes classificatory adjectives, as in lexicalized AN-phrases or those including relational adjectives, will have to be located in NP. Moreover, the layered structure of DP is taken to follow a concrete path via which information contributed by different modifiers is allocated, with type/kind specification realized structurally close to the head noun. Thus, all classifying adjectives will be taken as NP-modifiers, irrespective of the DP they are part of. If the Spec-approach outlined for quality adjectives in 3.1. is directly transferred to the NP-domain, we may need to find alternative ways to accommodate multiple kind-modifiers, given that NP provides only one specifier; a potential problem that cannot be discussed here for reasons of scope. While I will also remain agnostic as to their concrete location (for an

20 This concerns often very articulated and fine-grained functional structures of DP. Although usually taken to be language-dependent, popular candidates are number phrases (NumP) (cf. Arsenijević et al. 2014; Espinal & McNally 2009), kind phrases (KiP) (cf. Zamparelli 2000), or sort phrases (SortP) and unit phrase (UnitP) (cf. Svenonius 2008).

Modifiers applying to kinds

199

overview, see Alexiadou et al. 2007: 318–320; 390–393),21 kind modifiers will be taken as part of the NP-shell as in the simplified structure in (209), which merges the DP-structure argued for in ch.3 with relational adjectives along the lines of Ramaglia (2011: 75): (209)

a.

ein schöner städtischer Park ‘a nice urban park’

b.

SUMMARY

This subchapter has, in cursory fashion, introduced genericity and kinds. In particular, the relationship between well-establishedness and kind-referring NPs has opened out into the introduction of the weaker notion ‘concept’ as well as the opposition between DP- and NP-denotation. Lexicalized AN-phrases as well as nouns modified by relational adjectives have been argued to be located in an NP-shell contained in DP. The following sections take a closer look at two concrete implementations of the major idea of two modification layers. 21 For example, lexicalized AN-phrases with quality adjectives will also merge lower in the hierarchy than regular relational adjectives (cf. Svenonius 2008). For relational adjectives as such, as with the location of quality adjectives, a variety of different proposals are on the market; for example as zero-level categories structurally on a par with N0 and thus merging with it (cf. Alexiadou et al. 2007: 318–319), phrasal constituents merged as specifiers to NP (cf. Ramaglia 2011: 73–75; Bosque & Picallo 1996: 363–365), or partly as idiomatic partly as non-idiomatic adjectives either below √P or nP (see Svenonius 2008: 35–37). As throughout chs.3/4, I will also not deal with deverbal nouns and possible arguments realized as thematic adjectives.

200

Layered adjective order and genericity

4.2 The two-layered approach in Cinque and Larson Going back to Bolinger (1967) and Vendler (1968), Larson argues in a series of publications, talks, and lectures that modification within DP can only be understood as a system of two tiers, domains, or layers (cf. Larson 1995; 1998; 1999; 2000a; 2000b; Larson & Marušič 2004; Larson & Takahashi 2007). Among the core data in defense of the two-tiered system are a variety of seemingly unrelated oppositions which are argued to pattern alike in terms of pre- and postnominal modification, word order as regards multiple prenominal modifiers, and the possible interpretations of certain adjectives in certain syntactic environments. All of the oppositions are concerned with ambiguous expressions and their possible disambiguation depending on their respective positions relative to the head noun. In short, the pattern to unfold can be summarized as follows in (210) for English (bringing it in line with the terminology used throughout this book): (210)

SYNOPSIS OF

BOLINGER CONTRASTS IN THE FRAMEWORKS OF LARSON AND

CINQUE In tendency, English (and, more generally, Germanic) adjectives in prenominal attributive use are ambiguous, while they are unambiguous as postnominal modifiers. If the adjectives in question are doubled prenominally, the two distinct readings are rigidly ordered, with the only interpretation available in postnominal position encoded in farther distance from the head noun. 4.2.1 Data Cinque takes stock and reviews these oppositions (nine in total) alluded to in (210) – seven of which are enumerated here in (211a-g) (based on Cinque 2010: ch.2):22/23

22 Cinque’s overall goal is to establish systematic contrasts between English (and Germanic languages in general) and Italian (and Romance languages in general) in order to eventually account for the well-known intricacies of adjective placement in Romance and possibly shared base-generation sites of the two language families. Thus, some of the untestable structures in English allow for evaluations of their Italian counterparts, which, in general, is claimed to show the exact reverse behavior in pre- and postnominal use – I will, however, not further pursue language comparison in this book. 23 The two oppositions not listed here concern only one adjective each – unknown and different in two readings (cf. Cinque 2010: 14–16).

The two-layered approach in Cinque and Larson

(211)

201

prenom. adjectives

postnom. adjectives

a.

SL or IL

SL only

b.

restrictive or non-restrictive

restrictive only

c.

implicit relative clause or modal

implicit relative clause only

d.

intersective or non-intersective

intersective only

e.

relative or absolute

[no data for English]

f.

comparative or absolute superlatives

[no data for English]

g.

specificity or non-specificity-inducing

both

To rudimentarily flesh out the overall idea, yet not run through all of these oppositions before turning to SL/IL in (211a), consider the opposition in (211d). The example par excellence, already discussed in 1.2.2.3., is repeated here as (212a). In turn, its postnominal ‘counterpart’ in (212b) already forebodes some of the problems24 the approach of systematically juxtaposing pre- and postnominal modification brings along (cf. Cinque 2010: 9–10; Larson 1999: Day3/n.p.). (212)

a.

Olga is a beautiful dancer. (i) dancing is beautiful (ii) is beautiful and a dancer

→ →

[ambiguous] non-intersective intersective

b.

Olga is a dancer more beautiful than her instructor. → only reading (ii) available (intersective)

c.

Olga is a beautifulii beautifuli dancer. → intersective >> non-intersective

d.

*Olga is a beautifuli beautifulii dancer. → non-intersective >> intersective25

[unambiguous]

A parallel effect is claimed by Larson & Marušič (2004: 275–276) to hold for the restrictive / non-restrictive opposition in (211b): ambiguity in prenominal as opposed to postnominal position in (213a/b), respectively. Again, Cinque (2010:

24 The ‘problem’ here concerns the unavailability of the position for most regular quality adjectives without some added functional structure such as the comparative construction here. I will come back to this point in 4.1.3. 25 Strictly speaking, the example is in fact not claimed to be ungrammatical, but simply unavailable in this reading. That is, the sentence cannot be interpreted as having the order beautifuli >> beautifulii. This also holds for the equivalents of (212d) discussed below.

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Layered adjective order and genericity

19) extends on the observation by proclaiming a rigid order for the respective prenominal doublet as illustrated in (213c/d): (213)

a.

Every unsuitable word was deleted. (i) Every word was deleted; they were unsuitable. (ii) Every word that was unsuitable was deleted.

[ambiguous] → non-restr. → restrictive

b.

Every word unsuitable was deleted. only reading (ii) available (restrictive)

[unambiguous]

c.

Every unsuitableii unsuitablei word was deleted. → restrictive >> non-restrictive

d.

*Every unsuitablei unsuitableii word was deleted. → non-restr. >> restrictive

As already marked out in 1.2.1.2., Bolinger’s contrast between referent- and reference-modification is meant to extend to temporary and permanent expressions, which is mapped to SL and IL by Svenonius (1994). Some of the contrasts attested along these lines are repeated in (214), for which Bolinger (1967: 3–4) attests the pre- vs postnominal opposition to directly relate to the divide between characterizing (reference-) and occasional modification (referent-modification) (examples adapted from ibid.; the subscripts CHAR and OCC standing for ‘characterizing’ and ‘occasion’, respectively): (214)

a.

the responsibleC H A R man

–

the man responsibleO C C

b.

the stolenC H A R jewels

–

the jewels stolenO C C

c.

the visibleC H A R stars

–

the stars visibleOC C

To Cinque and Larson, this pattern presents itself in exactly parallel fashion to the intersective / non-intersective and restrictive / non-restrictive patterns in (212) and (213), respectively. Thus, for English, the pertinent data set is illustrated in (215): (215)

a.

The visible stars include Capella. [ambiguous] (i) Capella is intrinsically visible (but possibly not at the moment) → IL (ii)

Capella is visible at the moment. → SL

The two-layered approach in Cinque and Larson

b.

The stars visible include Capella. only reading (ii) available (SL)

[unambiguous]

c.

The visibleii visiblei stars include Capella.

→ SL >> IL

d.

*The visiblei visibleii stars include Capella.

→ IL >> SL

203

The opposition between (i) and (ii) is understood as a truth-conditional difference. As the former refers to intrinsic visibility, (215a) is broader in applicability than (215b). Thus, on a cloudy night on which Capella in fact cannot be seen, (215a) holds true (by virtue of Capella belonging to the class of visible stars), while (215b) is false. This, in turn, is claimed to be reflected in (im)possible continuations with subordinate clauses in (216a–d), which deny the SL-interpretation of the modifier, viz. its ‘right-now’-contribution, to hold. Given that visible as a postmodifier in (216b/d) is argued to only have the SL-reading, the continuations are odd (examples adopted from Larson & Marušič 2004: 274): (216) a. The visible stars include Capella, but it cannot be seen at the moment. b.

?/*The

stars visible include Capella, but it cannot be seen at the moment.

c. List all the visible stars, whether we can see them or not. d.

?/*List

all the stars visible, whether we can see them or not.

4.2.2 The theory according to Larson and Cinque Both Cinque’s (2010) and Larson’s (1998; 1999; 2000) frameworks are syntactically neo-reductionist in that they derive certain adnominal adjectives from underlying predicative structures in the form of reduced relative clauses (for reductionism, see 1.2.1.1. and 3.2.2.3.). These include all (English) postnominal adjectives and their associated interpretations introduced in the preceding section. In contrast, the alleged attributive-only readings are claimed to be derived in-situ, viz. in prenominal positions.26/27 Cinque’s and Larson’s analyses have very basic commonalities, in that they assume two tiers or layers, yet differ with regard to their nature. I will briefly introduce the two in the following.

26 Although he extends his discussion to Romance DPs, this holds for Cinque’s framework as well – the prenominal position is basic and the canonical postnominal position of Romance attributive-only adjectives is derived via movement (cf. ibid.: ch.3). 27 Also, the approach is argued to extend to full-fledged, viz. non-reduced, relative clauses in Japanese (see Larson & Takahashi 2007).

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Layered adjective order and genericity

LARSON : DP- VS NP-MODIFICATION Larson (1998; 1999; 2000b) and Larson & Marušič (2004) sketch the contrasts illustrated in 4.2.1. along the lines of a DP-shell-structure similar to the DPconfiguration assumed in (209). A basic split is assumed between DP- and NPmodification, with the former including all cases of postnominal modification in English and the latter responsible for the readings not available in postnominal position. Mapped to the table in (211), the right-hand column is thus unambiguously DP-modification, the left-hand column ambiguous between the two structural positions. The basic template, provided in (217) here, is adopted from Larson & Marušič (2004: 280) and incorporates the claim that in prenominal doublets the ‘postnominal reading’ is only available outside the ‘attributiveonly reading’: (217)

[DP D α [NP β N] α] (α = DP-modifier; β = NP-modifier)

With regard to the syntax-semantics interface, NP-modification is understood as typically non-intersective and associated with genericity, while DP-modification is typically intersective and equivalent in meaning to restrictive relative clauses. The crucial ingredient in Larson’s framework is a silent operator Γ, which he explicitly equates with Chiercha’s (1995) generic operator Gen (see 2.1.2.2.). Thus, if taken at face value, Larson adopts Chiercha’s conjecture that all ILs carry an event argument, yet are inherently generic in that they are obligatorily bound by Gen/Γ (cf. e.g. Larson 1998: 156–158). Crucially, Γ has scope over NP only (and the modifiers associated with it), but not over DP-modifiers. The available positions for the different readings in the visible stars example in (215) – SL and IL – are therefore the ones depicted in (218), with Γ binding the event argument of visible as an instance of NP-modification (cf. ibid.):28 (218)

a.

[DP the

AP SL visible

[Γe [NP AP IL visible

N]] stars

AP] SL visible29

Provided with the introduction of a silent operator, Larson argues for the attested word order preferences in terms of scopal differences: “[I]f we think of 28 A similar idea for attributive adjectives is found in Mueller-Reichau (2006: §7.5.). His system is more rigid, however, in that he argues all prenominal modification in English and German to be type-modification. Among other things, so the claim, the relative-absolute/subsectiveintersective problems could be circumvented. 29 Obviously, in a given DP, only one of the two DP-modifiers can be present at the same time.

The two-layered approach in Cinque and Larson

205

genericity as a matter of being bound by a covert generic operator binding events/situations, we can view the positional facts [. . .] as matters of scope” (Larson 1999: Day1/n.p.). Finally, the prenominal DP-modifier position is taken to be derived. Thus, as indicated in (219), any such element will necessarily have undergone movement from its postnominal site:30 (219)

[DP the [AP visiblej [Γe [NP [AP visible stars]]]

AP tj]]

CINQUE : DIRECT AND INDIRECT MODIFICATION Cinque (2010) does away with the semantic contribution of a silent operator altogether,31 locating the supposed two-tiered nature of modification outside of NP. Thus, unlike in the preceding, the distinction is no longer one between DPand NP-modifiers, but (prenominally) located in higher hierarchical domains in between D and NP. Cinque builds on the observations made by Sproat & Shih (1988; 1991) with respect to the two different modification strategies found in Chinese (as well as other languages): ‘direct’ and ‘indirect modification’ (see 3.2.1.). All of Larson’s NP-modifiers correspond to Cinque’s direct modifiers, while Larson’s DP-modifiers correspond to indirect modifiers. Yet, Cinque adds to the distinction by assuming an across-the-board lexical doublet theory along the lines of Siegel (1980), with the conflation of certain modifiers with relative clauses in Sproat & Shih being grist to his mill and taken as a surface reflex for the reductionist claim. In Sproat & Shih, the direct-indirect distinction is meant to primarily inform AORs in the narrow sense, including the central claim that direct modification occurs ‘bare’ and is subject to AORs, while indirect modification makes use of the same functional element as relative clauses (-de) and eludes AORs. This is reflected in Cinque’s treatment of, for example, dimension adjectives and the claim that in their relative reading, they will also be moved out of reduced relative clauses. In contrast, the counterpart adjective in the absolute reading (apparently lacking any comparison class) is located in a dedicated FP.32 Cinque 30 Which itself is probably a landing site, as DP-modifiers are assumed to be reduced relatives. 31 At least, he does not comment on it aside from a passing remark in an endnote (cf. Cinque 2010: 133; en.14) 32 This is a strange claim, in fact. Following Siegel (1980), the reverse effect would be expected to hold, viz. the relative reading as the core attributive one. Moreover, for example, tallness as an absolute category is arguably dubious in the first place and it is close to impossible for me as well as all my informants to get Cinque’s (2010: 20) intended disambiguation for absolute and relative readings as in i) and ii) for English and German, respectively: i) I’ve never seen QUITE SO TALLrel tallabs buildings. ii) Ich habe noch nie SOLCH GROSSErel großeabs Häuser gesehen.

206

Layered adjective order and genericity

speculates on the locus of the direct-indirect-split in form of a functional element d. The contribution of which, though somewhat obscure, is argued to be a matter of referential status and as such appears tailor-made for Bolinger’s reference-referent-opposition. Thus, Cinque (2010: 34) explicates that adjectives below d (i.e. direct modifiers) “modify something that is still predicative in nature, while (full and) reduced relative clauses, which are higher than d, modify something that already has some referential status.” True to the SpecFP-approach (see 3.2.2.), the framework locates all APs in specifier positions of functional projections, both for direct and indirect modifiers. The structure proposed by Cinque is sketched in (220) (slightly adapted from the illustrations in Cinque 2010: 25 and 34):33 (220)

4.2.3 Challenges to the two-layer system Several problems arise with the Cinque-Larson-systems just sketched. Most prominent among them is the lack of systematically testable structures given the highly restricted availability of postnominal modification in English (let alone other Germanic languages to which it is meant to extend according to Cinque). Second, prenominal doubling constructions often appear questionable in grammaticality and, finally, it is not entirely clear what kind of ‘genericity’ Larson has in mind for his NP-modification. THE POSTNOMINAL SOURCE

The major drawback concerns the reductionist core – as argued at various places throughout this study (see in particular 1.2.1.1.), the claim that the better part of adnominal modifiers is derived via movement from relative clauses is highly 33 Where ‘RedRC’ stands for ‘reduced relative clause’.

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dubious. Moreover, while at best a marginal phenomenon in German (cf. Dürscheid 2002), modifiers in postnominal position underlie severe restrictions also in English. As the pertinent section in Payne & Huddleston (2002: 445– 446) illustrates, it is in fact postnominal (which they call the postpositive use) rather than prenominal modification that exhibits peculiarities in need of explanation. For example, many English –ible/–able-adjectives have to be embedded in superlative constructions or require some form of restrictive quantification, e.g. via only or every, in order to feature postnominally (see (221a)). In other cases such as (221b), the temporariness expressed by a postmodifier is, pace Cinque and Larson, hardly available in prenominal use, while again other cases like the ones in (221c) only occur in combination with a restricted set of nouns / only a single noun (examples adopted from ibid.): (221)

a.

the *(only) day suitable; the *(best) result possible34

b.

the people present (?the present people)

c.

years/days/decades past (*approaches/exams past); proof positive35

Tellingly, in the environments in question, the IL-SL-alternation appears to show up with a handful of examples only, calling into question its systematicity in English. While explanations as to the basis of these individual restrictions are outside this study’s scope, the one overarching restriction that in fact applies to English postnominal modifiers is the heaviness criterion (cf., among many others, Abney 1989; Payne & Huddleston 2002).36 Thus, most generally, adjective complements are banned from prenominal positions in English as in *the similar to yours sweater vs the sweater similar to yours; see also 3.1. Transferring this constraint to the allegedly corresponding SL-IL/postnominal-prenominal distinction, the opposition dissolves as in (222a/b) (cf. also Sadler & Arnold 1994): (222)

a.

[. . .] on top of this frontier went through and put in all 150,000 or so stars visible by telescope in earths sky by hand.37

34 While not an –ible/–able-adjective, the case in (212b) above (Olga is a dancer *(more) beautiful *(than her instructor).) can arguably also be subsumed under such a constraint. 35 With proof being the only noun taking positive as a postnominal modifier. 36 It is at least noticeable in this respect that participles and –ible/–able-derivatives are all morphologically complex and thus carry a degree of heaviness themselves (cf. Cinque 1994). 37 [accessed April 2015]

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b.

Settlement was rapid after 1820, aided by a network of rivers navigable by steamboats, centered in the dominant city St. Louis.38

c.

Many other eastern rivers are navigable as well, including the Potomac, the Hudson, and the Atchafalaya Rivers [. . .]39

d.

The only river that is navigable is to the North. (cf. Bolinger 1967: 3)

(222a/b) show that the IL-reading of the two examples used time and again – navigable rivers and visible stars – are felicitous as postnominal modifiers provided they head heavy APs. In turn, (222c) is a case of the IL-reading in predicative use and (222d) is an actual relative clause, for which Bolinger attests an occasioncharacterizing ambiguity outside an informative context. While, to my knowledge, neither Cinque nor Larson discuss these latter examples, it is unclear how their approaches are meant to capture them, as we find the readings they explicitly conflate with direct-/NP-modification in the very positions taken to underlie indirect-/DP-modification. THE DOUBLET DATA

A second problem concerns the c-examples in (213) and (215), in which the adjectives are doubled (à la visible visible stars) and thus allegedly disambiguated. While not necessarily a problem from a theoretical standpoint, all of them are obviously highly unnatural and, unsurprisingly, a google search for [visible visible stars] does not return a single hit not connected to linguistics publications, conferences, or course material. I do, in principle, follow the data and therefore have not marked them in the above. Yet, many of my informants have trouble making sense of them at all or get the intended meaning contrasts only upon explication. This holds for both native speakers of English and of German for the respective equivalents. It also appears obligatory to put focus stress (see 3.2.1.) on the first of the two adjectives to render them acceptable at all as in (223): (223)

the VISIBLE visible stars

vs

?the

visible visible stars

Unlike in, for example, Turkic languages, the problem seems to be that neither German nor English make use of proper (syntactic) reduplication with respect to 38 [accessed April 2015] 39 [accessed April 2015]

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adjectives (cf. e.g. Schindler 1991).40 Yet, simplifying the pragmatic underpinnings, on the assumption that the hearer will at least try to assign meaning to any input, i.e. be cooperative (cf. e.g. Grice 1975; Löbner 2002), (s)he will thus arguably search for possible ways to assign different readings to the ‘same’ two surface realizations of a given adjective. One such possibility appears to be a type/kind-reading for one and a token/individual-reading for the other adjective. As will be argued in the next section, the doublet-observations for the IL-SL-data with English –ible/–able-adjectives (as well as German –bar-equivalents) can possibly be accounted for on the basis of their peculiar nature as deverbal modal adjectives. Before resuming this point, it is worth noting that the doublet data are part of more general interpretational preferences in the sense that they behave in similar ways to sequences of contradictory adjectives. Recall from ch.3 that in Kemmerer et al.’s (2007) study, contradictory DPs as in A woman saw a large small monkey. were rated as odd and elicited N400s and P600s on the second adjective as well as strong N400s on the head noun. The authors interpret the effects as a result of ungrammatical structures in the form of core lexical semantic violations (as opposed to proper AOR-violations); see 3.2.2.1. for discussion. However, at least the strong N400 on the noun could also be interpreted as indicating reinterpretation or repair processes (cf. Kuperberg 2013; Osterhout et al. 2008). As sometimes acknowledged in the literature (cf. e.g. Vendler 1957), there is a fairly consistent way of circumventing contradictoriness for examples such as (224) by assigning the inner AN-cluster ad-hoc-kind-status (or rather ‘concept’-status; see 4.1.3) to account for scope relations (example adopted from Scott 2002: 107):41 (224)

a.

a small large firm

b.

a large small firm

In this respect, Byrne (1979) reports on an offline-rating study with semantically contradictory adjective pairs. In a preliminary survey, his semi-professional raters consistently established readings for the DPs in question that follow the pattern of my extension of Partee’s (1995) head primacy principle as formulated 40 There are, in fact, a few cases with intensifying meaning such as evaluatives or dimension adjectives as in ein hübsches hübsches Mädchen ‘a beautiful beautiful girl’. It is unclear, however, in how far this can be regarded a grammatical phenomenon. 41 Scott does not consider these inner ANs cases of kind/’concept’-readings, but tries to account for them in merely syntactic terms within a SpecFP-framework; see 3.2.2.

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in 3.2.1.42 Crucially, the interpretations for the AAN-phrases tended to draw on, roughly, established kinds modified by an element untypical for or not inherent to the kind. This appears to hold despite the fact that the single AN-syntagms do not have kind status.43 Examples for this interpretation assignment task are provided in (225), including Byrne’s distillate of typical interpretations (cf. ibid.: 75):44 (225)

a.

a slow fast dog

→ an aging greyhound

a.’

a fast slow dog

→ a rocket-powered Saint Bernard

b.

a short tall man

→ the tiniest Harlem Globetrotter

b.’

a tall short man

→ King of the pygmies

In isolation as well in the interpretations assigned to the contradictory phrases, the adjectives in (225) would all be considered ILs. The interpretation pattern appears roughly equal to the DP-NP-/indirect-direct-divide in Cinque and Larson, while none of the adjectives straightforwardly fit the data patterns in 4.1.1. WHAT KIND OF GENERICITY ? A final problem, related to the discussion of doublets, is the notion of genericity applied by Larson (1998; 2000b) and Larson & Marušič (2004). First, the oppositions in (211) clearly do not all have equal status with respect to genericity. For example, the restrictive / non-restrictive opposition in (213), i.e. unsuitable words vs words unsuitable, does not easily lend itself to such an analysis,45 and neither

42 The extended principle reads: “In multiple hierarchical modifier-head structures of the kind [An-. . .A2-A1-HEAD], the head is interpreted relative to the context of the whole constituent, modifier A1 is interpreted relative to the local context created from the former context by the interpretation of the head, A2 is interpreted relative to the local context created from the former context by the interpretation of the head and A1, etc.” 43 At least, we would be hard-pressed to argue that tall men or slow dogs constitute wellestablished kinds in the sense of Krifka et al. (1995). 44 Byrne’s actual rating task is in fact somewhat trivial, building on the interpretations established in the pilot-study by providing participants with one of the DPs in question and the two possible interpretations, i.e., for example the expression in (225a) followed by the interpretations in (225a/a’). Unsurprisingly, it yields the expected results, with participants strongly matching a. and its interpretation, a.’ and its interpretation etc. 45 This holds for the example under discussion, i.e. Every unsuitable word was deleted. As argued by Umbach (2006), however, the data are more complex for definite DPs, in which the lexical meaning of the head noun licenses non-restrictive readings of the adjective, applying to the kind denoted by the noun. I do not see how this licensing condition could be fulfilled in this case, as there is no inherent unsuitability in words.

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does the absolute-relative opposition. In contrast, at least on Larson’s analysis, the intersective / non-intersective opposition in (212), the beautiful dancer example, is argued to be a matter of the adjective either denoting a property of events or of individuals. Thus, genericity comes into play in that the deverbal noun introduces an event argument and the adjective either applies to the generically bound dancing events or the individual (see the discussion in 1.2.2.3. for Larson’s formalization). It is in fact strange that Larson makes explicit use of Chiercha’s (1995) generic quantifier, as both readings of beautiful (qua dancing and qua individual) would be expected to be captured by it. Yet, ‘genericity’ is attributed to the former reading only. The core SL-IL-data Cinque and Larson draw on, the better part of which are listed again in (226), are yet again different in nature: (226)

a.

The visible stars (visible) [include Capella, Betelgeuse, and Sirius.]

b.

The navigable rivers (navigable) [include the Nile and the Amazon.]

c.

The stolen jewels (stolen) [were on the table.]

d.

The responsible individuals (responsible) [were contacted.]46

First, there is clear difference between, on the one hand, (226a–c), and (226d) on the other. As regards navigation, classifying rivers along the lines of navigability is by no means unusual and navigable rivers may well be argued a subkind of rivers even to people not involved in shipping. For example, Germany’s Federal Statistical Office offers a list of navigable rivers (‘schiffbare Flüsse’) on its website.47 While intuitions as to the ‘naturalness’ of classes of visible stars or stolen jewels48 may deviate, these at least seem potential subkinds – it is highly unlikely, though, that responsible individuals could be elevated to kind status. This is not necessarily a problem for Larson and Cinque, as neither explicitly conflates inner modifiers with kinds, but genericity in the sense of characteristic traits and permanence. If the intended difference is only one between IL and

46 Interestingly, German preferentially uses two different derivatives that make use of the same verbal base verantworten ‘~to take responsibility’, with verantwortlich (~responsibleSL) and verantwortungsvoll (~responsibleIL), the latter being more complex, including a nominal derivative. 47 48 I am not arguing here that any of these should or should not have kind status. There is at least a Wikipedia entry ‘List of missing treasure’:

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SL on Carlson’s (1980) object level, however, we wouldn’t expect the following, perfectly natural orders in (227): (227) a. Rick nodded and walked back to his house. I sighed looking up to the dark sky. Clouds were hiding all the stars but one. I stood there a bit looking at that one little visible star and walked back into the house to get ready for bed.49 b. On the south coast, on the other hand, is the harbor of Pasacao, into which a navigable little river, above a mile in width, discharges itself; [. . .]50 c. Now, little stuttering boy, sit down and have some food to calm your nerves.51 d. Auf dem Tagesmarkt dürfen folgende Gegenstände feilgeboten werden: [. . .] eßbare frische Pilze mit den im § 22 normierten Einschränkungen, [. . .]52 ‘The following items may be sold on the daily market: [. . .] edible fresh mushrooms with the restrictions standardized in § 22, [. . .]’ e. Essbare heiße Maronen bot dieser Mann feil.53 ‘This man had edible hot chestnuts on offer.’ In (227a), the explicit context straightforwardly applies to the SL-reading for visible, occurring, however, inside a second adjective little. Applying the standard diagnostics as well as intuitions with respect to permanence, the latter is an IL-adjective and is thus predicted to not occur outside visibleSL. The reverse is found in (227b), with navigable clearly used in its characterizing reading and followed by little. Recalling the corpus study in 3.3.,54 little – as a relative adjective – would i) preferentially be found outside the absolute adjective navigable and ii) is typically found outside of the class of core SL-adjectives. The context in (227c) suggests that the present participle stuttering is used in

49 50 51 52 53 54 On the assumption that English adjective order is very similar to German adjective order, which is evidently taken for granted in the Larsonian / Cinquean approaches.

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its occasion reading, while it occurs closer to the noun than little. In the by far most salient readings of the German examples in (227d/e), essbar55 refers to the class-/IL-reading, while frisch ‘fresh’ and heiß ‘hot’ are typically SL.56 Second, all the examples in (226) have a verbal base (as derived adjectives or participles), which may well explain the (easier) availability of temporary/ transient readings as well as the bare occurrence as postnominal modifiers given their heaviness (see above).57 Unambiguously being of verbal origin, assumptions with respect to their eventive structure are therefore to a lesser degree stipulated than for the better part of core SL-adjectives such as naked or empty (see 2.2.3.). However, leaving aside participles, English –ible/–able-adjectives (and their German counterparts suffixed with –bar) have further characteristics that may inform their behavior. First, they are usually absolute gradable adjectives58 and express modal-passive meaning (cf. Motsch 2004; Oltra-Massuet 2014).59 As shown in 2.1.1., they stand out among the alleged IL-SL-indicators in that some of them serve as prime examples for bare plural subject effects, yet are unavailable in the majority of other diagnostics such as lifetime effects or perception reports. In short, typical –ble-adjectives are taken as ILs. For example, Oltra-Massuet (2014: 99) makes reference to their inherently generic character as generalizers over properties and assigns them IL-status. Moreover, she notes that Spanish –ble-adjectives invariably take the copula ser and “predicate individual-level properties” (Oltra-Massuet 2014: 62, fn.43). Also, Krifka et al. (1995: 7) include them in their list of peculiar constructions that enforce characterizing readings as in (228a): (228)

a.

The book is readable.

b.

The tickets are bookable.

55 Essbar and eßbar are the same lexemes after, respectively before, the German spelling reforms of 1996/2004. 56 They are, however, interesting insofar as frische Pilze and heiße Maronen are often used in these co-texts, i.e. in the respective combinations – for example on billboards of market stalls. In how far this would make them ‘generic modifiers’ is a different question. 57 While not necessarily all have a concrete realization in English given that most –ible/–ableadjectives are loan words and thus stand in triangular configurations morphologically with other derivatives (cf. Haspelmath & Sims 2010). 58 This holds for the better part of –ible/–able/–bar-adjectives, as evidenced by Kennedy & McNally-style (2005) degree modifier tests (with, for example, navigable mapping to an upperclosed and visible to a totally closed scale): i) a ?slighty/completely/ ?half navigable river ii) a slightly/completely/half visible star 59 In fewer cases also modal-active meaning, as, for example, in combustible or perishable.

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Yet, it appears to be the pattern already noted in the discussion of temporariness in 2.2.2.: out of context, (228b) arguably has a salient reading in which ‘bookability’ will be short-lived, as tickets are usually issued for particular events. While this short period may still apply to the ticktes’ ‘lifetime’, sales may, unlike the readability of books,60 also well be suspended for a period of time. Thus, the change potential of tickets with respect to their bookability can more easily be accommodated than for books and their readability. This is straightforwardly reflected in when-conditional-diagnostics – readable books, by lacking change potential, are ungrammatical, while bookable tickets fare well.61 Now, the same holds for navigable rivers and visible stars – knowledge of the world allows us to readily imagine contexts in which navigability and visibility are suspended for rivers and stars, respectively. In turn, it is also more difficult to make sense of what ?readable readable books could be. Focusing on the German equivalents on –bar, the apparent dual nature of such adjectives is captured by Motsch (2004). He describes the word-formation pattern as among the most productive ones in German, putting no particular constraints on the base word and the preponderance of them being transitive activity verbs. Classified as one of the ‘modal event participation adjectives’ (cf. also Fleischer & Barz 2012: 332–335), their modal meaning roughly indicates the potential to take over the THEME -role in a certain event as a property ascribed to a noun. Motsch’s (2004: 298) general semantic pattern for modal event participation adjectives reads as follows (my translation): (229)

[POSSIBLE (E (AGENT, xT HE M E ))](x) “the capability of being affected by an event E is a property of x”

Concretely for –bar-adjectives, he explicates that »adjectives of the type described here denote properties that are attributed to an entity or a class of entities in all or in contextually restricted situations. They can thus induce general or particulate interpretations: essbare Pilze biegbares Eisen zusammenklappbare Tische eine heilbare Krankheit spaltbare Atome ein überzeugbarer Gegner lieferbare Ware

‘edible mushrooms’ ‘bendable iron’ ‘foldable tables’ ‘a curable disease‘ ‘fissionable atoms’ ‘a persuadable opponent’ ‘deliverable goods’«

(ibid.: 300; my translation)

60 In fact, Krifka et al.’s example of readability does not encode the typical modal-passive meaning, but rather middle-voice in the sense of The book reads well. 61 Thus, we find a clear acceptability difference between When the tickets are bookable, there is a real run on them. compared to */?When the books are readable, everyone enjoys them.

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Motsch obviously neither includes the inherently generic meaning nor does he make reference to the constructions Larson’s or Cinque’s discussions are based on. However, the quote provides a direct link to the particular status of – bar-adjectives as allowing two kinds of interpretations: general (i.e. generic) and particulate / restricted to situations (i.e. temporary). SUMMARY

This subchapter has discussed two particular approaches to a partitioned DP, which argue for at least two layers sensitive to SL- and IL-modification, the former claimed to inevitably precede the latter. The data Larson’s and Cinque’s respective theories are built on have been shown to bring along a number of problems, among them a shortness of testable constructions, partly questionable grammaticality judgements, and the peculiar status of –ible/–able/–baradjectives. The latter have been argued to stand out due to being deverbal modals, and thus in most cases allowing a temporary reading, as well as at the same time enforcing characterizing readings outside of strong contexts. The questionnaire study reported on in the remainder of this chapter will make use of this dual nature and test adjective order alternations and their acceptability in a context sensitive to generic readings.

4.3 Questionnaire study II 4.3.1 Rationale Building on the assumptions found in, for example, Cinque (2010) and Larson (1998), an offline rating study on adjective order was designed, making use of German deverbal adjectives suffixed with –bar. The underlying idea was to exploit their behavior explicated in the preceding sections: i) as expressions that enforce characterizing readings / genericity and ii) as a class that fairly consistently allows for temporary readings. Within each test item, the respective – bar adjective was paired in AAN-phrases with a second, permanent expression from the classes of absolute and non-gradable adjectives. Two different versions of the questionnaire were designed and presented to different groups of test subjects, with the two versions differing only in the order of the two adjectives in all critical items. All test items followed the same design, in which temporary readings were never realized but explicitly denied to hold at the time of utterance. Acceptability differences were hypothesized to surface depending on the provided serialization within an item, i.e. whether the –bar-adjective was placed before or after the

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respective second adjective. In general, if there is a direct link between genericity and proximity to the head noun, bar-adjectives in the position nearest to the noun (Ax-Abar-N) could be expected to enforce generic readings and thus be rated better than when preceding the second adjective (Abar-Ax-N). Given that both adjectives in all critical items were IL, the hypotheses were necessarily weaker than in a design making use of a SL- and an IL-adjectives – the general paucity of SLadjectives and the consequential restrictions on possible sensible combinations with –bar-adjectives and a noun were the major reasons for choosing the design at hand. The following sections introduce the participants and experimental set-up, the items and hypotheses, the statistical analysis, and a discussion of the results, respectively.

4.3.2 Participants and set-up PARTICIPANTS

Overall, 32 test subjects participated in the questionnaire study; 2 non-native speakers of German had to be excluded from the analysis. The remaining 30 participants were between 19 and 33 years old, native speakers of German, and undergraduate students of English philology, with 16 out of the 30 finishing version A and 14 finishing version B of the form. No participant had received any linguistic training in syntax or semantics at the time of completing the questionnaire. The study was conducted during two regular seminar sessions at the English department at the University of Kassel. Participation was voluntary and neither bound to fulfilment of course credit nor payment. SET- UP

In total, three rating tasks were conducted. Two pilot tasks were filled out by semi-professional raters in order to test the items which were to be used in the main questionnaire. The main questionnaire was split up in two versions, both of which consisted of 30 test items overall: 12 critical items encoding alternating adjective sequences and 18 filler items not related to prenominal modification patterns, which at the same time served as benchmark/control items. Overall, items were grouped into 5 main classes – 2 critical and 3 filler classes. Both versions started out with three fillers and were pseudo-randomized in the sequence of items, but did not include more than two items from the same class in succession (see next section for detailed illustration of item composition/ classes). Participants received a general oral introduction not stating the precise research question as well as a written instruction sheet they were asked to read

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carefully. After reading the instructions, participants had the chance to ask general comprehension questions. No time limit was set for completing the task, but test subjects were advised to carry out the individual tasks quickly and intuitively – overall, completion time varied between 10 and 14 minutes.

4.3.3 Items and hypotheses ITEMS

All 30 items, both critical and filler, were composed as mini-discourses in the following way: A first line provided a sentence and, in a line directly below, an arrow (→) introduced a second sentence. Participants were instructed to rate the two statements as one unit on a scale from 1 (=very good) to 6 (=very bad) according to how good the second statement was as a meaningful continuation of the first statement. For each item, the rating box was provided directly below the second sentence. An illustration of the general build-up is provided in (230): (230)

In der Firma Bauer wird gerade das [biegbare silberne] Metall verarbeitet. → Bei den jetzigen kalten Temperaturen ist es steif und nicht formveränderbar. 1

2

3

4

5

6

‘At the Bauer plant, the [bendable silverADJ] metal is being processed right now. → Given the cold temperatures presently, it is stiff and its shape cannot be modified.’ The twelve critical items all included a DP comprising two adjectives in the first sentence, one of which always was a deverbal suffixed with –bar, the other an absolute, non-gradable, or relational adjective.62 The respective second adjectives would all be classified as IL-adjectives. In 9 out of 12 items, the DP featured as the final constituent of the sentence, in the other three as the last but one. Also, in 9 out of 12, the DPs were in object position, some of which embedded

62 Among the –bar-adjectives, there is the possible exception of sichtbar ‘visible’, for which it is not entirely clear whether its base is the noun Sicht ‘sight’ or the verb sichten ‘to sight’. As regards the second adjectives, silbern ‘silverAdj’, metallen ‘metalAdj’, and antik ‘antique’ could also be classified as relational adjectives. Antik and silbern in principle allow for relational as well as quality readings in the test items, while material adjectives such as metallen have been argued to be an in-between case between relational and quality adjectives in ch.1.

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in larger constituents. Both sentences in all items were in present tense and the two adjectives differed in weight by a maximum of one syllable. 2/3 of all DPs were definite, 1/3 indefinite, evenly spread across critical conditions; see below.63 Crucially, the respective second sentences for all items denied that the property expressed by the –bar-adjective in the first sentence holds at the moment of utterance. Thus, follow-up statements in critical items were direct implementations of the constraint identified by Larson in 4.1.1. above, repeated here as (231), which is argued to disambiguate IL-SL-readings in prenominal use: (231) a. The visible stars include Capella, but it cannot be seen at the moment. b.

?/*The

stars visible include Capella, but it cannot be seen at the moment.

In the critical test items used, this ‘right-now’-denial was evoked by means of adverbial (adnominal) modification, for example, via zur Zeit ‘at the moment’, jetzig(e) ‘current’, momentan ‘momentarily’. Denial was carried out periphrastically via predicative paraphrases with neither the complete adjective nor its verbal base repeated verbatim. Given one of the hallmarks of generic theory – the non-condition of a certain property to hold at all times –, the combined interpretation of sentences 1 and 2 in each item were thus hypothesized to enhance the generic reading of the –bar-adjective. In turn, if adjective order in fact as closely corresponds to genericity as often assumed, items encoding the –bar-adjective closer to the noun, i.e. as a possible NP-modifier, should be preferred to those in which it precedes the second adjectives and thus at least less likely directly modifies the NP but rather higher up hierarchically between D and NP. In the following, the two conditions will be labeled with SL (for the Abar-Ax-N-condition) and IL (for the Ax-Abar-N-condition). Again, the labels carry no theoretical commitment. The two questionnaire versions included the same set of items, both critical as well as fillers, and differed in one slight modification only. For any critical item, the order of the two adjectives in the DP in question was reversed, as AxAbar-N in one and Abar-Ax-N in the other version. The distribution of the items was balanced, with both versions A and B receiving six Ax-Abar-Ns and six AbarAx-Ns. Filler items remained constant across versions and no item occurred twice in one version. An example of the build-up and the across-versions alternation (straight underline) of a critical item is illustrated in (232) for version A and (233) for version B. The key elements of the periphrastic ‘right-now’-denial 63 The sentences’ main predicates were not balanced but used for post-hoc analysis; see 4.3.5.

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in the examples’ follow-up sentences are indicated by dotted underlines (underlines were not part of the actual questionnaire design); for the complete set of critical items, see App.III: (232)

Aus der Kabine steuert Kranführer Meier den schwenkbaren rechtwinkligen Kran. → In der gerade festgestellten Position kann dieser nur auf- und abbewegt, nicht aber gedreht werden. 1

(233)

2

3

4

5

6

Aus der Kabine steuert Kranführer Meier den rechtwinkligen schwenkbaren Kran. → In der gerade festgestellten Position kann dieser nur auf- und abbewegt, nicht aber gedreht werden. 1

2

3

4

5

6

‘From the driver’s cab, crane operator Mayer navigates the rectangular rotatable (232) / rotatable rectangular (233) crane. → In its right now fixed position, it can only be moved up and down, but not be turned.’ A preliminary survey was conducted to assess the likelihood that either of the two adjectives stands in a (more or less) established relation with the respective noun in the critical items (cf. the discussions in 4.1.2. and 4.1.3., respectively). Six semi-professional raters64 were advised to estimate the establishedness of the complex concepts the two adjectives formed with noun, i.e. not as the complete Ax-Abar-N- / Abar-Ax-N-clusters, but as isolated AN-syntagms. With two exceptions, all Abar-N-combinations were rated more established than their respective Ax-N-counterparts; see next section for results. These establishednessratings will be consulted for individual item analyses. Three different kinds of fillers were designed in order to make them suitable as benchmark items. Fillers followed the same structural build-up as critical items (two sentences, the second as a discourse continuation introduced by an arrow), but did not make use of any complex modification patterns and did not vary across versions. First, a set of semantically inconspicuous continuations 64 ‘Semi-professional’ indicating that raters, some of whom trained in linguistics, were concretely enlightened as regards the purposes of their task and told that establishedness may well be a gradual phenomenon by means of examples.

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was created, see (234); second, a set of inference violations, see (235); third, a set of entailment violations, see (236) (the rating boxes have been left out in the examples here): (234)

SEMANTICALLY INCONSPICUOUS

Mit seinen alten Eichen und Buchen bietet der Spessartwald vielen Tierarten Lebensraum. → Insbesondere Wildschweine finden dort ein reichhaltiges Fressangebot an Wurzeln, Früchten und Aas.65 (235)

INFERENCE VIOLATION

Herr Schmidt hat seinen Hauptwohnsitz in Frankfurt am Main. → Die meiste Zeit des Jahres verbringt er in den Schweizer Alpen.66 (236)

ENTAILMENT VIOLATION

Die Leichtathletin rennt Runde um Runde auf der Tartanbahn. → Verwundert fragen sich die Zuschauer, warum sie sich kaum bewegt.67 Besides serving as general distractors, the fillers’ intended benchmark function was twofold. Given the strong deviations expected between, in particular, inconspicuous items and entailment violations, these were included to check whether participants in fact read and processed the mini-discourses. Moreover, given the expectation that Ax-Abar-Ns should receive better ratings than Abar-Ax-Ns, items of the former type can be hypothesized to tend toward inconspicuous items in ratings, while the latter possibly rather cluster with inference violations. Again, a preliminary survey was conducted and established the expected pattern that entailment violations are considered worst, inference violations slightly better, and inconspicuous items good; see next section for results. HYPOTHESES

The hypotheses for this study derive from some of the theoretical assumptions found in the literature and outlined in 4.2. above, viz. generic information being available in the lower DP-environments, possibly in NP only. The first hypothesis 65 ‘With its old oaks and beeches, the Spessart forest offers a habitat to many animal species. → In particular boars find a rich food supply consisting of roots, fruit, and carrion there.’ 66 ‘Mr. Schmidt has his principal residence in Frankfurt am Main. → He spends most of the year in the Swiss Alps.’ 67 ‘The athlete runs lap after lap on the tartan track. → Astonishedly, the crowd ask themselves why she hardly moves.’

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in (237) is the null hypothesis underlying statistical analysis, while the second hypothesis in (238) addresses the assumption that questionnaire participants are sensitive to the possible generic contribution of –bar-adjectives depending on their relative position in AAN-phrases. Finally, the third hypothesis in (239) concerns the relative distribution of scores of the benchmark in comparison with critical items. – NULL HYPOTHESIS Critical items do not show any difference in ratings depending on the order as either Ax-Abar-N (IL) or Abar-Ax-N (SL).

(237)

HYP 0

(238)

HYP I

– BAR-ADJECTIVES IN CLOSER PROXIMITY TO THE HEAD NOUN MORE

ROBUSTLY ALLOW FOR GENERIC READINGS

Given the theoretical assumption that generic information is encoded low within DP, Ax-Abar-Ns are hypothesized to enforce generic readings and thus more easily allow for denying the property in question to hold at the time of utterance than Abar-Ax-Ns. The latter are expected to be rated worse than the former. (239)

HYP II – BENCHMARK ITEMS SHOW THREE DISTINCT RATING PATTERNS ; SL- AND IL-RATINGS ARE GEARED TO THIS PATTERN Given the expected ratings for filler items as well as HYP I, by trend, the SL-condition is expected to pattern with inference violations and the IL-condition with inconspicuous items

4.3.4 Results PRELIMINARY SURVEYS

Two preliminary surveys with six semi-professional raters each assessed sub-kind / established concept scores for the adjective-noun-combinations made use of in the critical items and expected ratings for the three classes of filler items. With two exceptions,68 all Abar-N-combinations were rated more established than their respective Ax-N-counterparts on a 1-to-6-scale (=very good to very bad) – the worst mean rating for an individual Abar-N was 4.5, the best 2.0. For Ax-Ns, individual item means ranged from 6.0 to 2.0. The overall means for the two classes are provided in (240): 68 For item (2) in App.III (begehbar / antik / Grabstätte ‘accessible / antique / sepulture‘), antike Grabstätte scored better (2.0) than begehbare Grabstätte (3.5). For item (9) (nachbestellbar / umweltfeundlich / Kartusche ‘reorderable / eco-friendly / cartridge‘), umweltfeundliche Kartusche scored better (4.2) than nachbestellbare Kartusche (4.5).

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SEMI - PROFESSIONAL RATING : OVERALL MEANS IN ESTABLISHEDNESS -TEST OF ADJECTIVE - NOUN COMBINATIONS

Abar + N

Ax + N

3.54

4.83

Thus, in combinations with the nouns used, the respective –bar-adjectives on average are rated better in terms of establishedness than their counterparts, but the overall means indicate that neither class can be said to exhibit wellestablishedness. Making use of the same 1-to-6-scale (very good to very bad), the pilot study for the filler items yielded the expected results. Semantically ordinary (i.e. inconspicuous) items scored by far best and inference violations were rated better than entailment violations. The overall mean scores are illustrated in (241), with ‘FO’ standing for ‘filler ordinary’, ‘FI’ for ‘filler inference (violation)’, and ‘FE’ for ‘filler entailment (violation)’: (241)

SEMI - PROFESSIONAL RATING : OVERALL MEAN ACCEPTABILITY RATINGS FOR THE THREE FILLER CLASSES

FO

FI

FE

1.17

4.26

5.63

It is therefore justified to take fillers as general benchmark items for assessing whether participants in fact read, comprehended, and rated items accordingly. GENERAL RESULTS

All statistical analyses were carried out with SPSS software (IBM SPSS package Statistics 22). Tab.11 and Fig.7 summarize all mean scores, for both the two critical and the three filler conditions, labeled as outlined above: SL = Abar-AxN, IL = Ax-Abar-N, FO = filler ordinary, FI = filler inference (violation), and FE = filler entailment (violation). Table 11: Overall mean scores for the two critical conditions (SL and IL) and the three filler conditions (FO, FI, and FE). item class / condition

mean score

Abar-Ax-N (SL)

3.17

Ax-Abar-N (IL)

3.11

ordinary filler (FO)

1.51

inference violation (FI)

3.86

entailment violation (FE)

5.06

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Figure 7: Overall mean scores of critical (black and gray) and filler (benchmark) items (white, horizontal stripes, and dotted) from 1 (=very good) to 6 (=very bad)

As to be read off from Tab.11 as well as Fig.7, we find a minimal mean difference between the two groups of critical items. Being normally distributed, independent two-sample t-tests were performed for item as well as subject means to evaluate the relation between the SL- and IL-groups. No statistically significant difference between the two groups was found, neither between items nor between subjects – Tab.12 itemizes the t-test results:69 Table 12: Independent t-tests for subject and item means for the two groups SL and IL. statistics mean type

means and standard deviation

t-test

subject means

SL (M = 3.17, SD = 0.86) IL (M = 3.12, SD = 0.87)

t(58) = .284, p = .805

item means

SL (M = 3.16, SD = 0.76) IL (M = 3.11, SD = 0.66)

t(22) = .163, p = .872

An ANOVA was calculated for definite and indefinite DPs across the two critical conditions. The analysis was insignificant; F(3, 354) = 1.09, p = .353. Thus, definiteness of the different DPs has no bearing on the SL-IL-ratings and is excluded from further analyses (but see the discussion in 4.3.5.). The three filler categories were rated consistently with the predictions drawn from the preliminary survey (see (241)). An ANOVA was calculated to 69 See the Zusatzinformationen under http://www.degruyter.com/view/product/472464 for the complete output for the t-tests.

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allow for multiple comparisons between all five groups and, in particular, the relative mean differences between critical and filler items. The analysis was significant: – Subject means: F(4, 145) = 101.5, p < .001 – Item means: F(4, 37) = 16,77, p < .001 As expected given the above t-tests, post-hoc tests (Tukey HSD) for subject as well as item means revealed a non-significant relation between the IL- and SLgroups. In contrast, the relation between both these groups and the benchmark conditions FO and FE, respectively, were significant. A slight difference crops up between subject and item means in post-hoc test: While both SL and IL differ significantly from FI in the subject means analyses, significance is not quite reached in the item means analyses for these comparisons. Post-hoc across-group comparisons for all combinations featuring either SL or IL are summarized in Tab.13 (for IL-and SL-means as well as standard deviations, see Tab.12 above):70 Table 13: Post-hoc results (Tukey HSD) of the ANOVA for comparisons between critical (IL and SL) and benchmark groups (FO, FI, and FE). mean type

comparisons

mean diff. / significance

subject means FO (M = 1.51, SD = 0.399) FI (M = 3.86, SD = 0.665) FE (M = 5.06, SD = 0.602)

FO-SL FO-IL FI-SL FI-IL FE-SL FE-IL IL-SL

diff. = –1.67, p < .001 diff. = –1.61, p < .001 diff. = .68, p = .002 diff. = .74, p = .001 diff. = 1.89, p < .001 diff. = 1.95, p < .001 diff. = –.06, p = .998

item means FO (M = 1.56, SD = 0.347) FI (M = 4.09, SD = 1.379) FE (M = 5.17, SD = 0.761)

FO-SL FO-IL FI-SL FI-IL FE-SL FE-IL IL-SL

diff. = –1.6, p = .003 diff. = –1.55, p = .004 diff. = .94, p = .161 diff. = .98, p = .128 diff. = 2.02, p < .001 diff. = 2.07, p < .001 diff. = –.05, p = 1.0

INDIVIDUAL ITEMS ANALYSIS FOR CRITICAL ITEMS

The analysis of individual items provides a relatively uniform picture in terms of IL-SL-comparisons. As illustrated in Fig.8 below, the even overall mean scores for the groups SL and IL largely result from fairly similar individual item means across two conditions. Fig.8 also includes the relative establishedness as 70 See the Zusatzinformationen under http://www.degruyter.com/view/product/472464 for the complete ouput for the ANOVA.

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determined in the preliminary survey above (white bars) – importantly, ‘rating difference (-bar – X)’71 refers to the survey, not the mean differences in questionnaire ratings.

Figure 8: Mean comparisons across conditions SL (black) and IL (gray) for individual critical items. White bars indicate the intra-item rating differences from the preliminary establishedness survey (see (240)), calculated as the survey’s mean rating of the respective Abar-Ncombination minus the mean rating of the Ax-N-combination.

No item holds a mean difference across conditions larger than 1, with differences ranging from +.702 to –.975. As such, across items, IL and SL are therefore unfit as predictors. Establishedness, however, is a potential disturbance variable as discussed below.

4.3.5 Discussion First, HYP 0, see (237), cannot be rejected. Mean scores for the IL- and SL-conditions do not differ significantly, but are in fact near-identical. Consequentially, HYP I formulated in (238) must be rejected. HYP II as formulated in (239) is borne out in part, but must be rejected in other respects: 71 To be read as ‘-bar-adjective-noun minus X-adjective-noun’, i.e. the establishedness ratings for the AxN cluster subtracted from establishedness ratings for the AbarN cluster.

226 –

–

Layered adjective order and genericity

In case the test design used in this study is in fact suited to investigate into it, the core hypothesis – derived from the discussions in 4.1. and 4.2. – that generic information is encoded in close proximity to the head noun is not corroborated. Serializing –bar-adjectives as either the first or the second adjective does not influence the acceptability of denying the property in question to hold at the time of utterance Filler items were rated as expected given introspection as well as the preliminary survey with three distinct classes differing significantly from each other. Given that the IL-/SL-condition did not yield the effect hypothesized in HYP 1, however, these two do not exhibit the rough expectancy of two clusters IL/FO (inconspicuous filler class) and SL/FI (inference violations). Rather, both critical conditions tend toward FI and the item means analysis for IL-FI and SL-FI differences, respectively, does not reach significance

Given the lack of discrepancy between the IL- and SL-conditions (mean ratings of 3.11 and 3.17, respectively) in combination with their similarity to the FI-fillercondition (mean: 3.86), the overall results appear to speak in favor of a general oddness of denying the property expressed by the –bar-adjective to hold. These results do not allow for any straightforward interpretation. Thus, it is not immediately clear what the relatively poor ratings in fact show and whether they are in line with analyses of such expressions as strong enforcers of characterizing readings (see 4.2.3.) – they hold, however, irrespective of adjective order. Note that the ratings for all critical items are very similar to the FI-ratings – this is, in fact, the behavior predicted for the SL-condition only, but not the IL-condition (see HYP II). One interpretation would be that participants in fact initially interpreted all critical items, roughly speaking, in their SL-readings, while upon denying the property to hold at utterance time, the items became odd. On the other hand, the IL-reading is essentially a prerequisite of the SL-reading.72 It seems more plausible an assumption that participants simply interpreted the property X to hold for an individual Y, with any kind of following denial thereof unexpected. While this is the more likely interpretation, it does blur the assumed bifurcation between characterizing and situation-bound modification via –baradjectives73 and, in consequence, casts doubt on the principal effect adjective order had on disambiguating them. 72 Not necessarily a logical one that could be captured by entailments of the kind [readingSL → readingIL], because, for example, a tiny creek could suddenly become navigable during a flood, but arguably as a default inference. 73 This interpretation, to a degree, calls into question the design as such: The classification into SL- and IL-readings had been motivated by the assumption that genericity (~IL) crucially does allow for exceptions and would be reflected in ratings. As pointed out by one reviewer, taking

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Unlike questionnaire study I, the design addressed AORs only indirectly, in that participants were actually asked to rate how well the meanings of two sentences matched. However, a rough pattern more directly related to AORs can be discerned from individual items analyses and the potential bearing of establishedness of individual Abar-N-combinations relative to Ax-N-combinations from the same item. In Fig.8, the black bars indicate the intra-item rating differences from the preliminary establishedness survey (see (240)), calculated as the survey’s mean rating of the respective Abar-N-combination minus the mean rating of the Ax-N-combination. Crucially, semi-professional rating cannot be used for robust statistical analysis due to its small sample size (N = 6). Moreover, there is no one-to-one correspondence between mean differences in the questionnaire and rating differences from the survey. For example, the two items with the highest establishedness-rating differences (schwenkbar / rechtwinklig / Kran ‘rotatable / rectangular / crane’ and essbar / hellbraun / Perlpilze ‘edible / light_brown / blushers’) have very low questionnaire mean differences across critical conditions. In contrast, biegbar / silbern / Metall ‘bendable / silver / metal’ has an establishedness-rating difference of 0, yet a relatively high questionnaire mean difference.74 Yet, on the two assumptions that AN-establishedness is an indicator for distribution / AORs in the questionnaire design and that adjective order in the introductory sentences flowed into ratings, we would expect a one-to-one correspondence between the two differences and, therefore, the three bars for each item in Fig.8 to exhibit the following patterns for two extreme cases: – a high rating difference (white bars in Fig.8) should correlate with low IL(gray) and high SL-scores (black) – a low / negative rating difference should correlate with high IL- and low SLscores The reasoning is essentially the following: establishedness-rating differences are calculated by subtracting Ax-N-scores from the Abar-N-scores. Thus, the higher a white bar, the more established a –bar-adjective is relative to the second adjective (both in combination with the respective noun); for negative values, the situation is reversed – low white bars indicate relatively high establishedness second adjectives that do not allow for IL-/kind-interpretations at all would likely have increased the chances of yielding the hypothesized results. While this may well be the case, the reasoning, established in the preceding chapters, had been that enforced kind interpretations should be enough to trigger them, irrespective of the second adjective’s status (as long as it does not kind-modify the N itself). 74 See the Zusatzinformationen under http://www.degruyter.com/view/product/472464 for a table itemizing questionnaire means, mean differences, and establishedness-rating differences.

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of the second adjective plus the noun relative to the –bar-adjective plus the same noun. Thus, in case establishedness or conceptual cohesiveness features in AORs, high establishedness-differences should be tantamount to –bar-adjectives being preferred close to the noun and thus low scores (tending toward 0, i.e. good) for the IL-condition, while low / negative differences should reverse the picture. Among the results of this study, we do not find cases for the first extreme. However, two items stand out as regards the other extreme (i.e. a low / negative rating difference), namely the only ones scoring negatively in the preliminary survey: begehbar / antik / Grabstätte ‘accessible / antique / sepulture’ and nachbestellbar / umweltfreundlich / Kartusche ‘reorderable / eco-friendly / cartridge’. Thus, antike Grabstätte as well as umweltfreundliche Kartusche were rated more established than begehbare Grabstätte and nachbestellbare Kartusche, respectively. This is straightforwardly reflected in the questionnaire means – for both cases, the Ax-Abar-N-condition (IL: 3.19 and 2.56, respectively) is rated significantly worse than the Abar-Ax-N-condition (SL: 2.14 and 1.71, respectively). Also, the two items have a disproportionally high influence on the overall item means with mean difference scores of -.975 and -.822, respectively. Therefore, a second item means t-test was performed, excluding the two items in question. Yet, while by trend approaching the predictions from HYP I , the analysis remained insignificant; item means (SL (M = 3.16, SD = 0.76); IL (M = 3.11, SD = 0.66)): t(18) = .880, p = .391. The item nachbestellbar / umweltfreundlich / Kartusche ‘reorderable / ecofriendly / cartridge’ is interesting for another reason. As pointed out in 2.1.1.7., attributive SL-adjectives in indefinite DPs in object position appear odd if the sentence’s main predicate is preferentially time-stable / IL as the repeated example in (242) shows: (242)

*/?Peter kennt ein nacktes Mädchen. ‘Peter knows a naked girl.’

The item was the only one in the whole questionnaire following this pattern75 (see item (9) in in App.III), which should make the SL-reading unavailable from the beginning. Again, this has no apparent bearing on preferences, given that the item prefers the Abar-Ax-N- over the Ax-Abar-N-condition. 75 In fact, it is not entirely clear to me whether it actually did, as vertreiben ‘~to market/distribute/ sell’ has a strong generic reading, yet would not pass many of the dagnostics of ILs. Once more, this seems a case in which contextual information easily allows an expression to surface in temporal or permanent guises.

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4.4 Chapter summary This chapter has introduced various types of generic constructions, in particular kind-referring NPs. To different degrees, well-establishedness and the notion of ‘concept’ in the sense of Krifka (1995) and Bouchard (2002; 2011) have been shown to play a prominent role as regards AORs. As often assumed in the literature, a general partitioning of DP into two layers, an inner one – essentially responsible for the specification of subkinds – and an outer one – serving as the location for modifiers of individuals –, seems necessary. In this vein, relational adjectives as well as quality adjectives as parts of lexicalized AN-phrases were located in NP. In Cinque (2010), respectively Larson (1998; 1999; 2000a), two more particular approaches to a partitioned DP have been discussed, which argue for at least two layers sensitive to SL- and IL-modification, the former claimed to inevitably precede the latter. I have pointed out a variety of problems arising from both approaches, including a lack of testable structures, the general problems of transformational approaches to attributive adjectives, and at times dodgy grammaticality judgements. Paving the way to the second questionnaire study, peculiarities of –ible/–able/–bar-adjectives have been discussed, locating their suitability to manifest presumable IL-SL-ambiguities in their verbal origin paired with their strong generic default readings. These default readings have arguably also dominated the questionnaire results reported on in 4.3. The study incorporated several concepts, notions, and ideas compiled in this and the preceding chapters, most notably generic interpretations of modified DPs and ‘concepts’ in the form of establishedness. No effect has been found for adjective order variations with –bar-adjectives in contexts claimed to enforce their generic contribution. However, as discussed in 4.3.5., interpreting the study’s results is far from straightforward and they appear to blur the line between the two presumably distinct readings ‘characterizing’ and ‘occasion’.

Conclusions This study has had a twofold research focus in, more generally, approaching restrictions on adjective order and their status in grammatical systems and, more narrowly, investigating into the potential bearing the temporariness / permanence of property concepts have on the domain. To this end, a multimethod research design has been employed, substantially drawing on theoretical considerations from a variety of backgrounds as well as evaluating and generating empirical data, the latter in both experimental settings and a corpus search. With qualifications addressed in the following, the general picture unfolding over the course of the discussion has to large degrees been a negative one – most of the concrete order restrictions addressed in this study do not warrant core grammatical status and the influence of temporary property concepts is indirect only. In the introduction to this book, three general research questions were formulated. These provide the path along which the study’s major findings will be recapitulated and commented on in this final section. (A) Is the empirical motivation for treating AORs as directly written into syntactic structures well-founded? Are there possibly constraints that can be captured as grammatical phenomena, while others elude such an approach? Ch.1 has called into question the general usefulness of notional property classes as classification systems for adjectives. This negative view is largely reflected in the discussion of AORs (in the narrow sense), which are often conceived of as driven by hierarchies of said classes. As shown for quality adjectives in ch.3, even by narrowing down their application to cases of hierarchical modification, property classes undergenerate substantially and, logically, the finer-grained they are assumed to be, the more they do so. This is, I believe, no reason to dismiss their force altogether – very many complex DPs, and the respective unmarked serializations of multiple adjectives they comprise, are testament to their existence. Yet, it appears to be a primarily psycholinguistic phenomenon, driven by frequency and applicability in general as well the frequency of particular combinations of adjectives and nouns (and possibly morphophonological weight, which in the corpus search, somewhat surprisingly, has had no statistical effect). If these latter factors are taken as, at best, indirect factors for grammatical description, AORs in the narrow sense are not grammatical phenomena and highly unlikely represented syntactically, be it in the form of functional heads dedicated to notional content or otherwise. With particular

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regard to its treatment of quality adjectives, the cartographic endeavor is therefore not sustainable. If a restrictive scope on what linguistic theory should make its field of inquiry is applied, one has to concur with Bouchard’s dismissive stance on order restrictions, repeated here from the introduction: »Though the classification of properties may interact with language, it is not part of grammar, it does not fall under the object of study of linguistic theory.« (Bouchard 2002: 121)

The same reasoning in fact applies to the insertion of the weak bifurcation into the DP-structure ch.3 ends on. Given the corpus-based approach in 3.3., in which the output categories do not reflect notional but grammatical classes, we may speak of statistical normality with which absolute adjectives are preceded by relative adjectives, but perfectly natural counterexamples are readily available. Yet, on the assumption that absoluteness can be conflated with objectivity, which ch.1 has shown to be a contested view, these findings support the general consensus that preferential adjective orders represent hierarchies of increasing subjectivity with increasing distance to the head noun. The sole hard and fast rule the generated data warrant are the positions of relational adjectives (as defined in ch.1, i.e. including ethnic and material adjectives) and idiomatic expressions / lexicalized AN-phrases. These have been argued to, semantically, establish subkinds and, syntactically, modify in NP irrespective of the larger DP they are a part of. Besides (adverbial) modification of deverbal nouns, which has largely been neglected in this study, this is one concrete reflex of the difference between reference- and referent-modification that can be granted grammatical status in the realm of AORs more generally. Subkind relations can, in principle, be accommodated in the larger picture of adjective order hierarchies supposedly reflecting hierarchies of increasing inherence. However, neither relational adjectives, by definition, nor phrasal names, by ch.3’s focus of inquiry as well as the conception of DP-structure outlined there, fall under the objects of investigation formulated in research question (B): (B) Within the class of quality adjectives, how well-founded are claims that locate temporary property concepts in positions farther away from the head noun than permanent ones? If ordering is not a rigid matter in this respect, is there a preferred location and may we derive it from more general perspectives on AORs? Ch.2 has laid open several of the intricacies that the notion of temporariness in general and its vague yet forceful grammatical implementation in the IL-SLcontrast bring along. Nonetheless, as an intuitive concept as well as a distillate

232

Conclusions

from the pertinent diagnostics, a fairly central class of SL-adjectives has been isolated. The way these preferentially cluster in multiple-adjective DPs clearly speaks in favor of not awarding their temporary character peculiar status with respect to AORs. SL-adjectives in general as well as the input adjectives in the corpus search are all absolute adjectives in the sense of Kennedy & McNally (2005) and, in line with the answer to (A) above, they do not show rigid orders in sequences of adjectives that are both referent-modifying in Bolinger’s sense. Aligned left-to-right, they precede color terms and follow relative adjectives with statistical normality once the class of age adjectives modifying animate referents is excluded. In turn, this latter group is arguably a case in point for complex frequency patterns of conceptual iconicity and Krifka’s (1995) notion of ‘concept’ as mapped to AORs by Bouchard (2002). Questionnaire study I essentially supports the results recapitulated in the above. While the benchmark does differ significantly from both the IL- and SLgroups, this effect is largely down to the inclusion of relational adjectives – once these are excluded from the analysis, results become insignificant. The IL-SL-polysemes hypothesized to be sensitive to order preferences do not manifest this effect. Caveats concern the questionnaire design at hand as well as experimental settings in general devised to go about AORs. Order restrictions differ in subtlety and, in particular, the use of polysemes may well be argued too nuanced a distinction for the items used. It is, moreover, not clear to which degree core meaning representations of polysemes may influence ratings. In general, as indicated in the literature review of psycho- / neurolinguistics studies, a ‘problem’ for object languages with predominantly prenominal attributive adjectives is manifested in the role of incremental processing. For example, for reading time or ERP measures on the respective second adjectives in question, it is essentially adjective order outside even the minimal context of the modified domain that is recorded, primarily reflecting the statistical bottom line underlying adjective hierarchies. In particular in ch.4, I have addressed the more concrete claims to temporary expressions preceding permanent or generic ones along the lines of a partitioned DP. Here, the IL-SL distinction is at least partly borne out: (C) In which way do theories incorporating an asymmetric partitioning of DP inform apparent AORs with respect to the SL-IL-distinction? What is meant by stage- and individual-level in the approaches and in how far are the data they are based on valid or generalizable? Partitioning of DP has been argued to bear on AORs with respect to temporariness on, speaking with Carlson (1980), kind-level not object-level. This, however,

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is not a matter of individual adjectives and, in principle any (quality or relational) adjective can feature as part of well-established or classifying NPs (although SL-adjectives have been argued to be rare in well-established / lexicalized ANphrases). Following standard proposals, the locus of phrasal subkind formation has been identified as NP, with modification of individuals located above NP. The proposals by Larson and Cinque, while similar in nature, reach farther and several problems ensue if taken at face value. Besides the lack of testable structures given the restrictive postnominal position in English as well as the unnaturalness of the doublet data, I have argued –ible/–able/–bar-adjectives to be peculiar in their status as modal-deverbals that enforce generic readings and at the same time, by virtue of encoding events, allow for easily accommodating SL- or occasion-readings. The final questionnaire study has tried to exploit this presumed double nature. The general results run counter to the hypothesis that denying the properties expressed by –bar-adjectives to hold at the time of utterance enhance the generic reading – quite the opposite, the items score poorly throughout. No concrete answer suggests itself as to whether this is actually affected by adjective order or simply the general interpretational preferences of the – bar-adjectives. As shown by the interplay of the pilot- and questionnaire-ratings, however, the design as such was sensitive to adjective order, with post-hoc results, again, backing up the influence of ‘conceptual iconicity’. This study by no means claims to have covered adjective order exhaustively. In fact, very many issues have been left untouched: e.g. the order of multiple relational adjectives, co- and subordinated adjectives, intensional adjectives, or complex APs. I do hope, however, that it contributes to a better understanding of several core intricacies of basic orders as well as the possibilities and limits of their grammatical accessibility.

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Appendix I Translations ■

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= ch.3 (154) a. ‘Q: [. . .] What comes to your mind immediately, what a day later? A: Wish 1: A tall beautiful garden during a sunny permanent early summer. Wish 2: A tall beautiful tree in this garden.’ b. ‘After these efforts everyone was hungry, and in a large beautiful hall there was a good French-style meal for about 120 [. . .]’ c. ‘[. . .] With a larger payout, she would buy herself a big beautiful Audi.’ d. ‘Freismuth explains the new favorite pastime: “Somewhere ‘caches’, that is, plastic containers full of little nice things and the logbook, are hidden.”’ e. ‘The new path to the OSP runs through a little nice park to the Luther-hall, one of the time-honored gems on the Diakonie-compound.’ = ch.3 (155) a. ‘[. . .] a circular copper plate, 5cm in diameter, into which three red round pieces of broken glass and three white circular nacre discs are set in [. . .].’ b. ‘[. . .] while a winter athlete, in astonishment, drives to the ski piste in his red round car.’ c. ‘Pink frilly dresses underneath black straight coats, slender dresses with flower embroidery [. . .]’ = ch.3 (156) a. ‘Spokesman Cristophe Prazuck explains that the pirates were using two fast little boats and a so-called mothership.’ b. ‘An Aviso is a fast little battleship used for signaling.’ = ch.3 (157) a. ‘In particular, young city dwellers appreciate so-called retro bikes, old heavy rusty bicycles just as from grandma’s and grandpa’s days. b. ‘One day I was handed over an old heavy rifle for the march.’ = ch.3 (182) ‘Mr. Mayer lives in a village of 500 souls in Upper Bavaria. He is unmarried, has hardly any close friends, and is fairly lonesome. His situation seems to be down primarily to one reason: He is mute and there is only one other person in the village who knows sign language. (a) By now, however, the mute unmarried [(b) unmarried mute] man feels too old for changing residence.’

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= ch.3 (183) ‘In the “Goldener Krug”, a true Berlin corner pub, a man is sitting every night at the same table in a corner. Usually, he has a bite to eat and drinks 3 to 4 beers, sometimes he has company. Yesterday, though, he was on his own and just stared into the room mutely. The innkeeper once told me that the regular was unmarried and had not had a partner in years. (a) Maybe that is why the unmarried mute [(b) mute unmarried] man seems a little sad.’ = ch.3 (184) ‘This doctor in Lindenallee, Dr. Schulz, is just a very gruff man, his language is always rude and when he is examining me, he touches me like a butcher handles a piece of meat. I’m still going there, though, because he is a very good physician, very clever, and his diagnoses are actually always accurate. (a) The gruff clever [(b) clever gruff] doctor has helped every single time this far.’ = ch.3 (185) ‘My orthopedist is actually a good and empathetic doctor. However, when I was there last week because of my wrist, he was real gruff, twisted my wrist and even hurt me. Obviously, he’s a clever man and probably just wanted to check whether I was in actual pain. (a) I guess patients are occasionally being tested in this way by the clever gruff [(b) gruff clever] doctor.’ = ch.3 (186) ‘You know we had been looking for a shelf for the living room for quite some time and now we’ve found a great one. It had to be black for contrast, as the other furniture is mostly pretty light-colored. Also, we needed an extraordinarily wide one to not make it seem lost in the corner. (a) The black wide [(b) wide black] shelf from “Möbel Schuhmann” is as if it was made for our living room.’

Appendix II Critical items of questionnaire study I (i) Critical items: including the two versions for each item, i.e. temporary as well permanent readings, that were distributed over the two questionnaire versions A and B (rating boxes have been left out in the appendix) ■ (1) krank – intelligent – Frau (‘sick/crazy – intelligent – woman’) SL-/temporary context Ich war vorhin im Supermarkt. Da stand eine Frau vor mir an der Kasse, die offenbar krank war – sie hat die ganze Zeit geniest, ist wohl erkältet. Die war auf jeden Fall ziemlich intelligent, weil ihr innerhalb von ein paar Sekunden aufgefallen ist, dass bei der Abrechnung etwas schief gelaufen ist. (a) Die intelligente kranke Frau hat das alles bis auf den Cent genau ausgerechnet. (b) Die kranke intelligente Frau hat das alles bis auf den Cent genau ausgerechnet. IL-/PERMANENT CONTEXT Wir hatten früher diese sehr intelligente Frau als Nachbarin, eine Physikprofessorin. Leider sind dann kurz nacheinander ihr Sohn und ihr Mann gestorben. Das hat sie nicht verkraftet und ist seitdem krank, total verrückt. (a) Die kranke intelligente Frau musste schließlich in eine Anstalt eingeliefert werden. (b) Die intelligente kranke Frau musste schließlich in eine Anstalt eingeliefert werden. ■

(2) ruhig – dick – Junge (‘calm – fat – boy’) SL-/TEMPORARY CONTEXT Auf seinem Schulweg letzte Woche hat Peter einen Jungen auf einer Parkbank am See sitzen gesehen, der so dick war, dass neben ihm und seinem Schulranzen kaum mehr Platz war. Ganz ruhig und leise hat er Stücke von seinem Brot abgebrochen. (a) Der ruhige dicke Junge hat nämlich die scheuen Enten gefüttert. (b) Der dicke ruhige Junge hat nämlich die scheuen Enten gefüttert.

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IL-/PERMANENT CONTEXT Peters Schulkamerad Jochen ist allgemein ein ganz stiller Junge, immer sehr ruhig und unaufgeregt. Er lässt sich nicht so schnell aus der Reserve locken und bleibt gelassen, auch wenn er mal gehänselt wird. Und weil er recht dick ist, kommt das durchaus manchmal vor. (a) Vor allem Jens und seine Freunde machen sich über den dicken ruhigen Jungen lustig. (b) Vor allem Jens und seine Freunde machen sich über den ruhigen dicken Jungen lustig. ■

(3) munter – liebenswürdig – Kind (‘lively – likable – child’) SL-/TEMPORARY CONTEXT Wie fast jeder, mag ich das Kind der Schmidts ja sehr gerne – Petra ist wirklich liebenswürdig. Gelegentlich kann sie zwar ein Morgenmuffel sein, aber heute Morgen war sie sehr munter, komplett wach und ausgeschlafen. (a) Frau Schmidt musste dem munteren liebenswürdigen Kind noch nicht mal den Schulranzen nachtragen. (b) Frau Schmidt musste dem liebenswürdigen munteren Kind noch nicht mal den Schulranzen nachtragen. IL-/PERMANENT CONTEXT Montags die erste Stunde Mathe ist für mich immer anstrengend, weil fast alle meine Schüler noch in den Seilen hängen. Katja ist dann das einzige Kind, das schon voll da ist, weil sie allgemein sehr munter ist. Sie ist zwar stets liebenswürdig, aber gelegentlich ist es auch schwierig, wenn die anderen in der Klasse noch halb schlafen. (a) Vor allem Peter ist dann häufig genervt von dem liebenswürdigen munteren Kind. (b) Vor allem Peter ist dann häufig genervt von dem munteren liebenswürdigen Kind.

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(4) böse – behaart – Lehrer (‘evil/angry – hairy – teacher’) SL-/TEMPORARY CONTEXT Herr Müller, unser Mathelehrer, ist heute voll ausgerastet. Er war richtig böse auf Julian, weil der die ganze Zeit mit seinem Nachbarn geredet hat. Er hat ihn angebrüllt und sah dabei zum Fürchten aus mit seiner behaarten Brust und den fuchtelnden Armen. (a) Julian ist dann auch ziemlich erschrocken vor dem behaarten bösen Lehrer. (b) Julian ist dann auch ziemlich erschrocken vor dem bösen behaarten Lehrer.

Appendix II

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IL-/PERMANENT CONTEXT Unser Mathelehrer, Herr Müller, ist wirklich zum Fürchten. Zunächst mal sieht er schon aus wie ein Monster, am ganzen Körper behaart und mit einem düsteren Blick. Er ist aber auch richtig fies und böse, weil er sich immer freut, wenn jemand eine schlechte Note bekommt. Ich glaube, er mag Kinder überhaupt nicht. (a) Die ganze Schule hofft vor jedem Schuljahr, den bösen behaarten Lehrer nicht in Mathe zu bekommen. (b) Die ganze Schule hofft vor jedem Schuljahr, den behaarten bösen Lehrer nicht in Mathe zu bekommen. ■

(5) wild – schön – Tier (‘feral/wild – beautiful– animal’) SL-/TEMPORARY CONTEXT Letzte Woche waren wir bei Dennis zum Kaffee eingeladen. Er hat ja diesen Hund, einen Labrador, als Haustier, der ganz glattes Fell hat und wirklich süß und lieb ist. Ein sehr schöner Hund. Aber an dem Nachmittag schien ihm irgendwas nicht zu passen. Er war wild, hat grimmig geguckt und ist auf- und abgesprungen. (a) Schließlich musste Dennis das wilde schöne Tier in den Zwinger sperren. (b) Schließlich musste Dennis das schöne wilde Tier in den Zwinger sperren. IL-/PERMANENT CONTEXT Wir waren ja letztes Jahr auf einer Safari in Kenia, sehr beeindruckend. Vor allem Geparden sind tolle Tiere, wenn man sie mal außerhalb eines Zoos, wild und nicht gezähmt sieht. Eine Szene hat uns besonders fasziniert: Majestätisch stand der schöne Gepard da und hat nach Beute Ausschau gehalten. (a) Plötzlich rannte das schöne wilde Tier los und die Antilope war innerhalb von vier Sekunden geschnappt. (b) Plötzlich rannte das wilde schöne Tier los und die Antilope war innerhalb von vier Sekunden geschnappt.

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(6) dunkel – groß – Haus (‘dark – big– house’) SL-/TEMPORARY CONTEXT Anne und ich wollten eigentlich letzten Freitag auf diese Studentenparty in dem alten Haus am See, ich war da ja noch nie. Wir sind so gegen 10 Uhr hingefahren, aber da war gar nichts. Alles war komplett dunkel, kein einziges Licht in irgendeinem Fenster, obwohl das Haus ja richtig groß ist und es viele Fenster gibt. (a) Irgendwie war das gespenstisch und das große dunkle Haus hat uns fast Angst gemacht. (b) Irgendwie war das gespenstisch und das dunkle große Haus hat uns fast Angst gemacht.

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IL-/PERMANENT CONTEXT Warst Du schon mal beim Finanzamt in der Weserstraße? Dieser hässliche Klotz neben der Grundschule, so groß wie kein anderes Haus in der ganzen Innenstadt. Die Farbe ist auch seltsam, ziemlich dunkel, irgendwas zwischen braun und schwarz. Das ist so typische 70er Jahre Architektur, da hat man sich wohl gedacht: (a) Das dunkle große Haus wird dem Bürger imponieren und ihn brav seine Steuern zahlen lassen. (b) Das große dunkle Haus wird dem Bürger imponieren und ihn brav seine Steuern zahlen lassen. ■

(7) grob – klug – Arzt (‘rude – bright– doctor’) SL-/TEMPORARY CONTEXT Mein Orthopäde ist ja prinzipiell ein guter und einfühlsamer Arzt. Aber als ich letzte Woche da war wegen meines Handgelenks, war er richtig grob, hat mir das Handgelenk verdreht und sogar wehgetan. Er ist natürlich ein kluger Mann und wollte vermutlich nur sehen, ob ich auch wirklich Schmerzen habe. (a) Ich denke mal, dass Patienten gelegentlich so getestet werden von dem klugen groben Arzt. (b) Ich denke mal, dass Patienten gelegentlich so getestet werden von dem groben klugen Arzt. IL-/PERMANENT CONTEXT Dieser Arzt in der Lindenallee, Dr. Schulz, ist einfach ein richtig grober Mensch, immer ruppig im Ton und wenn er mich untersucht, fasst er mich an wie ein Metzger ein Stück Fleisch. Ich gehe aber trotzdem weiter hin, weil er ein ziemlich guter Mediziner ist, sehr klug und mit seinen Diagnosen eigentlich immer treffend. (a) Der grobe kluge Arzt hat mir bisher jedes Mal geholfen. (b) Der kluge grobe Arzt hat mir bisher jedes Mal geholfen.

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(8) feig – höflich – Rentner (‘cowardly – polite– pensioner’) SL-/TEMPORARY CONTEXT In Christians Straße wohnt ein älterer Herr, über 70 Jahre alt und schon Rentner. Die Nachbarn, auch die Kinder mögen ihn gerne, da er immer hilfsbereit und zu jedem höflich ist. Als Christian diesen Dienstag allerdings von ein paar älteren Jungen angepöbelt worden ist, war der Mann ziemlich feige. Obwohl er es gesehen hat, ist er aus Angst einfach weitergelaufen und nicht dazwischen gegangen. (a) Der feige höfliche Rentner hätte durchaus mehr Zivilcourage zeigen können. (b) Der höfliche feige Rentner hätte durchaus mehr Zivilcourage zeigen können.

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IL-/PERMANENT CONTEXT Unser Nachbar, ein Rentner, ist einfach durch und durch feige. Wenn wir mal die Musik zu laut haben, ruft er die Polizei, statt bei uns zu klingeln. Wenn die Mieter diskutieren, ob man auf dem Balkon grillen darf, enthält er sich der Meinung, und wenn man bei ihm klingelt, um vielleicht nach ein bisschen Zucker zu fragen, öffnet er nicht, obwohl er eigentlich zu Hause ist. Das ist komisch, weil er im Prinzip immer höflich und zuvorkommend ist. (a) Irgendjemand muss dem höflichen feigen Rentner mal sagen, dass das auf die Dauer nervt. (b) Irgendjemand muss dem feigen höflichen Rentner mal sagen, dass das auf die Dauer nervt. ■

(9) stumm – ledig – Mann (‘cowardly – polite– pensioner’) SL-/TEMPORARY CONTEXT Im „Goldenen Krug“, einer echten Berliner Eckkneipe, sitzt ein Mann jeden Abend am gleichen Tisch in der Ecke. Meist isst er eine Kleinigkeit und trinkt 3, 4 Bier, gelegentlich hat er auch Begleitung. Gestern war er aber alleine und hat nur stumm in den Raum geschaut. Der Wirt hat mir mal erzählt, dass der Stammgast ledig sei und auch schon seit Jahren keine Partnerin gehabt hätte. (a) Der ledige stumme Mann wirkt vielleicht deshalb manchmal ein wenig traurig. (b) Der stumme ledige Mann wirkt vielleicht deshalb manchmal ein wenig traurig. IL-/PERMANENT CONTEXT Herr Mayer lebt in einem 500-Seelen Dorf in Oberbayern. Er ist ledig, hat kaum enge Freunde und ist recht einsam. Die Situation des Mannes scheint vor allem einen Grund zu haben: er ist stumm und es gibt in dem Dorf nur eine weitere Person, die die Gebärdensprache beherrscht. (a) Der stumme ledige Mann fühlt sich mittlerweile aber zu alt für einen Wohnortwechsel. (b) Der ledige stumme Mann fühlt sich mittlerweile aber zu alt für einen Wohnortwechsel.

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(10) geschickt – vornehm – Herr (‘skillful/nifty – gentle– gentleman’) SL-/TEMPORARY CONTEXT In der Spielbank in Bad Homburg geben sich schöne und reiche Herren die Klinke in die Hand. Am Roulettetisch zum Beispiel steht ein vornehmer Mann, gut angezogen und mit tadellosen Manieren. Geschickt erscheint sein Umgang mit den Spielchips, er lässt einen kleinen Stapel durch die Finger laufen und wirft sie dann elegant auf „Rot“.

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(a) Das Glück ist dem geschickten vornehmen Herrn aber nicht hold und die Kugel landet auf „Schwarz“. (b) Das Glück ist dem vornehmen geschickten Herrn aber nicht hold und die Kugel landet auf „Schwarz“. IL-/PERMANENT CONTEXT Der Bekannte meiner Tante, ein älterer Herr, ist unglaublich geschickt. Alles Handwerkliche beherrscht er mühelos, im Mikado ist er unschlagbar und vor allem in Sportarten wie Tischtennis ist er geschickt. Da er ein vornehmer und zuvorkommender Freund ist, hilft er meiner Tante oft bei allerlei Gartenarbeiten. (a) Bittet sie den vornehmen geschickten Herrn darum, kommt er vorbei zum Rasenmähen und Heckeschneiden. (b) Bittet sie den geschickten vornehmen Herrn darum, kommt er vorbei zum Rasenmähen und Heckeschneiden. ■

(11) eifrig – jung – Student (‘eager – young– student’) SL-/TEMPORARY CONTEXT Ines studiert Mathematik im zweiten Semester. Sie ist noch sehr jung, 19 Jahre alt. In ihrer Freizeit spielt sie Schach und ist politisch aktiv bei den Jusos. Da im Moment Wahlkampf ist, ist sie eifrig in der Parteizentrale zugange und klebt Wahlplakat um Wahlplakat auf Sperrholzplatten. (a) Während der heißen Wahlkampfphase schwänzt die eifrige junge Studentin auch mal die Uni. (b) Während der heißen Wahlkampfphase schwänzt die junge eifrige Studentin auch mal die Uni. IL-/PERMANENT CONTEXT Ines studiert Mathematik im zweiten Semester. Nicht nur im Studium, sondern bei all ihren Interessen ist sie stets strebsam und eifrig. Obwohl sie noch relativ jung ist, hat sie kaum Flausen im Kopf und verfolgt ihre Hobbies Klavierspielen, Hochschulpolitik und Tennis mit Ernsthaftigkeit und Fleiß. (a) Die junge eifrige Studentin lässt auch bei Regen und Lustlosigkeit keine Trainingseinheit aus. (b) Die eifrige junge Studentin lässt auch bei Regen und Lustlosigkeit keine Trainingseinheit aus.

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(12) klar – breit – Scheibe (‘clear/transparent – broad– pane’) SL-/TEMPORARY CONTEXT Um für die Fußballspiele des „1.FC Rot-Weiß“ keinen Eintritt zahlen zu müssen, schleicht sich Dirk meist in die alte Mühle auf dem Hügel hinter dem Stadion. Er

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wischt die verstaubte Scheibe klar und hat dann perfekte Sicht durch das breite Fenster auf den Platz. (a) Die klare breite Scheibe ist allerdings angebrochen, so dass Dirk aufpassen muss sich nicht zu schneiden. (b) Die breite klare Scheibe ist allerdings angebrochen, so dass Dirk aufpassen muss sich nicht zu schneiden. IL-/PERMANENT CONTEXT Gegenüber von uns wohnt eine Frau ohne großes Schamgefühl. Ihr Badezimmer hat ein sehr breites Fenster ohne Vorhänge. Außerdem sind die Scheiben klar, also durchsichtig und nicht aus so einem Milchglas. Ich kann also quasi in ihr komplettes Badezimmer sehen. (a) Schon komisch, dass man sie durch die breite klare Scheibe nackt beobachten kann. (b) Schon komisch, dass man sie durch die klare breite Scheibe nackt beobachten kann. (ii) Benchmark items: general hierarchy (GH) – identical in both questionnaire versions ■ (1) schön – heiß – Sommer (‘nice – hot– summer’) Im Vergleich zum letzten Sommer ist es dieses Jahr ja ziemlich trist. Letztes Jahr war es richtig schön, mit über 25°C durchgehend ab Anfang Juni – für deutsche Verhältnisse sogar heiß. Jetzt regnet es jeden zweiten Tag und man kann weder grillen noch an den See zum Baden fahren. (a) So Sachen vermisst man, wenn man an den schönen heißen Sommer damals denkt. (b) So Sachen vermisst man, wenn man an den heißen schönen Sommer damals denkt. ■

(2) klein – französisch – Auto (‘small – French– car’) Meine Mutter hat sich ja jetzt mal einen französischen Wagen gekauft, einen Peugeot. Das Auto ist super für den Stadtverkehr, weil es ziemlich klein ist und in jede Parklücke passt. Mein Vater meint natürlich, dass die Franzosen ständig Pannen hätten und die Hälfte der Zeit in der Werkstatt seien. (a) Das französische kleine Auto hatte meiner Mutter aber auf Anhieb gut gefallen. (b) Das kleine französische Auto hatte meiner Mutter aber auf Anhieb gut gefallen.

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(3) breit – schwarz – Regal (‘wide – black– shelf’) Wir hatten ja ziemlich lange nach einem Regal fürs Wohnzimmer gesucht und haben jetzt ein tolles gefunden. Schwarz sollte es sein für den Kontrast, weil die anderen Möbel zum großen Teil so hell sind. Außerdem brauchten wir ein ungewöhnlich breites, damit es nicht so verloren in der Ecke steht. (a) Das schwarze breite Regal von „Möbel Schuhmann“ ist wie gemacht für unser Wohnzimmer. (b) Das breite schwarze Regal von „Möbel Schuhmann“ ist wie gemacht für unser Wohnzimmer. (4) lang – schwer – Tisch (‘long – heavy– table’) Es ist jedes Mal das Gleiche, wenn Anke umzieht. Sie hat ja diesen Esstisch, der bestimmt 1,80m lang ist und einfach unglaublich viel wiegt. Der ist mindestens so schwer wie ihr Kleiderschrank. Und natürlich ist sie wieder in den 4. Stock gezogen. (a) Mit vier Leuten mussten wir den langen schweren Tisch tragen, weil er nicht in den Fahrstuhl gepasst hat. (b) Mit vier Leuten mussten wir den schweren langen Tisch tragen, weil er nicht in den Fahrstuhl gepasst hat. (5) hoch – Münchner – Rathaus (‘high – MunichAdj– city hall’) Das Rathaus am Marienplatz in München gehört zu den Wahrzeichen der Stadt. Jährlich bewundern mehrere Millionen Touristen das hohe Gebäude, das nahezu jedes andere Bauwerk der Landeshauptstadt überragt, auf ihren Besichtigungstouren zwischen Pinakothek und Hofbräuhaus. (a) Das hohe Münchner Rathaus wurde zwischen 1867 und 1909 errichtet. (b) Das Münchner hohe Rathaus wurde zwischen 1867 und 1909 errichtet. (6) bequem – ledern – Sofa (‘comfortable – leatherAdj– sofa’) Unser Ecksofa aus der Reihe „Modern Spirit“ ist bereits in jungen Jahren zu einem Designklassiker geworden. Bequem und doch elegant lädt es zum gemütlichen Fernsehabend ein und muss sich ebenso vor der Abendgesellschaft nicht verstecken. Die Oberfläche aus fein gegerbtem Leder ist sowohl widerstandsfähig als auch pflegeleicht. (a) Das bequeme lederne Sofa verfügt über verstellbare Armlehnen und Nackenstützen. (b) Das lederne bequeme Sofa verfügt über verstellbare Armlehnen und Nackenstützen. (7) groß – lang – Häuserblock (‘big – long– block of houses’) Vom Alexanderplatz kommend beginnen hinter dem Strausberger Platz die sogenannten Stalinbauten, ehemalige DDR-Vorzeigeobjekte. Groß und wuchtig

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ist der Häuserblock, aber vielmehr noch imponieren seine Fassaden im Stil des Berliner Klassizismus sowie seine Ausdehnung. Lang und schier kein Ende nehmend zieht sich das Ensemble über vier Kreuzungen auf beiden Straßenseiten. (a) Heutzutage wohnt ein buntes Gemisch aller sozialen Schichten in dem großen langen Häuserblock. (b) Heutzutage wohnt ein buntes Gemisch aller sozialen Schichten in dem angen großen Häuserblock. ■

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(8) schwer – heiß – Topf (‘heavy – hot – pot’) Während die Frauen den Brotteig kneten, stehen die Männer bereits an der Feuerstelle mit dem Gulaschtopf. Die Köche rühren ständig mit dem Holzlöffel, damit das Fleisch nicht anbrennt in dem heißen Kessel. Er ist über 30kg schwer und es befinden sich ca. 100 Portionen darin, da schließlich das ganze Dorf mit dem leckeren Paprikaeintopf versorgt werden will. (a) Die Einwohner schauen bereits erwartungsfroh auf den schweren heißen Topf. (b) Die Einwohner schauen bereits erwartungsfroh auf den heißen schweren Topf. (9) eckig – grün – Spielbrett (‘square – green – board’) Monopoly zählt zu den bekanntesten Gesellschaftsspielen der Welt – nahezu jedes Kind kennt das eckige Spielbrett mit den am Rand entlang führenden Straßen und Bahnhöfen. In Deutschland ist das Brett klassischerweise grün, während es im amerikanischen Original verschiedene Farben hat und sich an existierenden Orten in Atlantic City orientiert. (a) In Deutschland hat das eckige grüne Spielbrett dagegen keine reale Stadt als Vorbild. (b) In Deutschland hat das eckige grüne Spielbrett dagegen keine reale Stadt als Vorbild. (10) elegant – italienisch – Anzug (‘elegant – Italian – suit’) Paul Schwegler ist ein großer Freund italienischer Mode, insbesondere der Schuhe und der Anzüge. Sein Lieblingsstück ist ein eleganter Dreireiher, tiefschwarz und mit feinen, kaum sichtbaren Nadelstreifen, der lediglich zu ganz besonderen Anlässen aus dem Schrank geholt wird. (a) Zur Hochzeit seiner jüngsten Tochter hat Herr Schwegler den eleganten italienischen Anzug selbstverständlich getragen. (b) Zur Hochzeit seiner jüngsten Tochter hat Herr Schwegler den italienischen eleganten Anzug selbstverständlich getragen.

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(11) tief – schmal – Meerenge (‘deep – narrow – strait’) Der Bosporus bei Istanbul gehört zu den meist befahrenen Seestraßen Europas. Die Meerenge zwischen Schwarzem und Mittelmeer ist zwar recht schmal, aber gleichzeitig tief genug, um auch riesigen Last- und Containerschiffen die Durchfahrt zu ermöglichen. (a) Somit werden bedeutende Seehäfen der Ukraine und Süd-Russlands durch die schmale tiefe Meerenge mit den Ozeanen verbunden. (b) Somit werden bedeutende Seehäfen der Ukraine und Süd-Russlands durch die tiefe schmale Meerenge mit den Ozeanen verbunden. (12) kurz – schnell – Motorrad (‘short – fast – motorcycle’) Tim hat sich jetzt ein neues Motorrad gekauft, aber seine Freundin, die immer gerne bei ihm mitgefahren ist, ist gar nicht begeistert. Die Maschine ist so kurz, dass man nicht zu zweit auf dem Sitz Platz hat. Tim wollte sie trotzdem unbedingt haben, da man so ein schnelles Ding wohl sonst in der Preisklasse nicht bekommt. (a) Das schnelle kurze Motorrad beschleunigt angeblich in vier Sekunden von 0 auf 100. (b) Das kurze schnelle Motorrad beschleunigt angeblich in vier Sekunden von 0 auf 100.

Appendix III Critical items of questionnaire study II The order of the two adjectives in square brackets in the first sentences of the items alternates across questionnaire versions A and B. 1. In Pauls Badezimmer hängt ein [drehbarer rechteckiger] Spiegel. → Dieser ist so an der Wand befestigt, dass er sich nicht bewegen lässt. 2.

Wie viele andere Rhodos-Touristen besucht das Ehepaar die [begehbare antike] Grabstätte. → Aufgrund von Restaurationsarbeiten lässt sich ihr Inneres im Moment nicht betreten.

3.

In der Firma Bauer wird gerade das [biegbare silberne] Metall verarbeitet. → Bei den jetzigen kalten Temperaturen ist es steif und nicht formveränderbar.

4. Nach langer Fahrt entlang der Passstraße erreicht Familie Müller oberhalb der Streyeralm einen [befahrbaren hochgelegenen] Weg. → Beim derzeitigen Schneegestöber kann dieser nicht mit dem Auto passiert werden. 5.

Zur Justierung befindet sich an der Längsseite des Apparats die [ feststellbare metallene] Vorrichtung. → Aufgrund eines fehlenden Hebels lässt sich diese zur Zeit nicht einrasten.

6.

Die Brauerei lagert das Bier in den [tragbaren runden] Behältern. → Da diese momentan zu mehr als zwei Dritteln gefüllt sind, lassen sie sich nicht bewegen.

7.

Das Teleskop auf die entsprechenden Koordinaten ausgerichtet diskutieren die schwedischen Astronomen über Sirius, den [sichtbaren goldgelben] Stern. → In der hellen Sommernacht Skandinaviens können sie ihn nicht erblicken.

8. Südlich des Zanskar-Massivs befindet sich der [bewohnbare großflächige] Hang. → Das schroffe Klima in den jetzigen Wintermonaten lässt nicht zu, dass die Bauern in ihren dortigen Behausungen verbleiben. 9.

Die Druckerei Schmidt vertreibt mit der CX-7 eine [nachbestellbare umweltfreundliche] Kartusche. → Aufgrund eines Website-Fehlers kann diese derzeit nicht geordert werden.

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10. Aus der Kabine steuert Kranführer Meier den [schwenkbaren rechtwinkligen] Kran. → In der gerade festgestellten Position kann dieser nur auf- und abbewegt, nicht aber gedreht werden. 11. Erhöhte Widerstandsfähigkeit wird durch das Zusetzen einer [brennbaren porösen] Stahlwolle erzielt. → Zuvor in Wasser getränkt, ist sie jetzt nicht entflammbar. 12. Zurück aus dem Wald legt Tills Opa die [essbaren hellbraunen] Perlpilze auf den Tisch. → Im derzeitig rohen Zustand sind diese giftig und nicht zu genießen.

Subject index absolute adjective see adjective adjective – absolute 40, 43, 62–66, 104–109, 133, 151, 155, 158, 160, 171–172, 178, 182, 185, 188, 206, 213, 218 – acquisition 33 – adjective-modifying use 21, 41, 162 – adverbial use 20, 39, 159 – age 16, 51, 125, 132–135, 144, 152, 162, 166, 171–172 – appositive use 20, 26, 37, 118 – attributive and predicative 20, 29, 32–35 – color 16, 40, 52–55, 69–71, 78, 92, 104, 109, 121, 132–155, 158, 167, 171–172, 178, 185, 194 – cross-linguistic 12–18 – dimension 16, 40, 46–52, 61–64, 92, 105, 133, 132–155, 158, 160, 172, 178, 185, 205, 209–210 – evaluative 16, 40, 48–51, 83, 97, 104–105, 121, 132–155, 158, 160, 171–172, 209– 210 – intersective 42–43, 46–55, 128–129, 133, 149–155, 202–205 – lexical aspect 89–98, 105–109 – non-subsective 44–46 – notional definition 10–11, 15–16, 38–42 – relational 28, 41, 55–60, 92, 104, 120– 122, 129–130, 146–147, 157–158, 163– 164, 170, 178, 182–185, 193–194, 197– 199 – relative see adjective (absolute) – shape 40, 50, 52–55, 71, 104, 109, 121, 132–155, 158, 167, 185 – subsective see adjective (intersective) – use in German 19–22 adjective order – applicability 148–149 – conceptual iconicity 124–125, 149–150, 170, 191–199, 216–228 – notional classes 131–148, 171–172 – objectivity and subjectivity 148–155 – parallel and hierarchical 126–128, 130– 131, 134–135, 140

– psycholinguistics 135–141, 172–186, 209– 210, 216–228 – scope 113, 126–131, 195–197, 203–206, 208–210 – temporariness see temporariness age adjective see adjective (age) Arabic 126 argument structure 47–52, 55, 57, 86–88 attribution see adjective (attributive and predicative) Bulgarian 118 cartographic approach 133–135, 141–148, 205–206 Catalan 68–69, 88, 96 classifying see kinds color adjective see adjective comparison class 40, 46–55, 62–66, 109, 128–131, 149–154, 205 compound 57–60, 130, 132–133, 162, 179, 191–196 comprehension question 186 conceptual iconicity see adjective order (conceptual iconicity) conversion see derivation coordination 57, 82, 124, 127–128, 193–194 copula 12, 17, 20, 23–24, 31–32, 34, 59, 68–69, 75, 81–82, 88, 94–97, 106, 213 copula particle see predicative-onlys corpus linguistics 33–35, 139, 141–144, 149, 155–172 definiteness 73, 79–80, 84, 96, 126, 159– 160, 164, 171, 191–193, 198, 218, 223, 228 degree modification 22, 61–66, 104–109, 147, 158, 213 derivation 15, 17, 19, 21, 41, 66, 74, 103– 108, 147–148, 207, 212–219 dimension adjective see adjective direct and indirect modification 125–126, 132, 206–207

262

Subject index

DP-hypothesis 114–119, 121, 130, 153, 198– 200, 205–207 dynamicity 89–91 entailment see inference and entailment pattern evaluative adjective see adjective event semantics 50–52, 86–88, 211 FocusP 135, 142 frequency 33–35, 125, 148–150 fronting see movement function application 24–25 gender see phi-feature genericity 52, 72–75, 86–88, 104, 189–199, 203–206, 210–228 gradability see adjective (absolute; relative); grammatical comparison grammatical comparison 22, 39–41, 57, 63– 65, 158 Greek 10, 118, 126 Hebrew 126 hierarchical modification see adjective order (parallel and hierarchical) IL and SL – agentivity 88, 92–98, 175 – bare plurals 73–75, 83, 89, 213 – coordination 82 – existential sentences 71–72 – free and absolute adjunct 80, 94–95 – lexical aspect 89–98 – lifetime effects 81–82, 88, 213–214 – locative and temporal modification 76–78, 83, 88 – perception reports 75–76, 83–84, 157, 213 – theories 68–71, 85–89, 92–93, 96–97 – when-conditionals 78–79, 82, 95, 156, 214 imperative 94 indefiniteness see definiteness indirect modification see direct and indirect modification individual-level see IL and SL inference and entailment pattern 42–61, 64, 90–92, 105–108

inflection 10, 19–22, 115–119 intensional adjective see adjective intersective adjective see adjective intonation 37–38, 119, 208 – comma intonation 122–124, 126, 129, 140, 142, 162, 186 stress see stress kinds 14–16, 28, 30, 55–60, 70, 86, 113– 114, 120–122, 130, 189–199, 209–215, 222 – kind-level 85–86, 104, 113, 191–192 Kurdish 126 lexical integrity 57, 125, 191–199 meronymy 52–55 modal adjective see adjective modification zone 120–122 movement 25–26, 135, 144, 150–153, 204– 208 noun 10–19, 30, 71 – attributive noun 130 – common 23, 42, 48, 87, 142, 161 – eventive 28, 44, 50, 57–58, 71, 87, 162, 195, 199, 211 – mass 107, 154 – of measure 150 – ontological status 191, 195 – person noun 125, 167, 170, 172 – relational 36 NP-shell 197–199 number see phi-feature objectivity and subjectivity 43–44, 50 parallel modification see adjective order (parallel and hierarchical) participle 39, 104, 132, 207 – past 31, 41, 83, 105–106, 158 – present 96, 105, 159, 172, 212 parts-of-speech 10–19, see also adjective; noun; participle; verb permanence see temporariness person see phi-feature phi-feature 20–22, 115–116

Subject index

polysemy 34, 39, 47–48, 56, 69, 95–98, 123, 128, 135–136, 172–186 Portuguese 68, 96 predicate modification 24–25, 37, 45, 130 predication see adjective predicative-onlys 27–28, 31–33, 82–83 progressive 93, 95–97, 105 prototypicality 12–17, 19–20, 22, 39, 54, 99, 121, 147, 159 pseudocleft 94 question context 38, 56, 128 reduplication 208–209 referent- and reference-modification 29–36, 38, 48, 51, 151 relational adjective see adjective relative adjective see adjective relative clause 12, 37–38, 114, 125, 133, 195–196 – reduced 25–26, 150–151, 203–208 restrictive modification 26, 30, 36–38, 123– 124, 128, 186, 196, 202–204, 210 semantic type – Dixon 16–17 – logical 23–25, 29–30, 37–38, 42, 46–48, 51–52, 56–57, 61–63 Serbo-Croatian 48 shape adjective see adjective Slavic 48 Somali 126 Spanish 68, 88, 96 stage-level see IL and SL stress 37, 119, 127–128, 135–136, 140, 142, 146, 196, 208–209 subjectivity see objectivity and subjectivity subkinds see kinds subsective adjective see adjective syntactic position of adjectives – adjunct 36, 80, 115–117, 145

263

– functional projection 115–116, 118–119, 133–135, 141–148, 151–154, 197–199, 205–206 – head 116–118 – postnominal 20, 26, 30, 114, 117–118, 121, 200–208 telicity 89–91, 105–108, see adjective (lexical aspect) temporariness – adjective order 111–113, 155–186, 195, 201–206, 215–228 – IL and SL 68–70, 98–103 – lexical aspect 89–98 – modification and predication 30–35 – parts-of-speech 13–17 – relative and absolute adjectives 104–109 – within and between individuals 108–109 time-stability see temporariness transformation see movement UG see universality universality 11–18, 64, 114–115, 122, 131– 135, 141–155 verb 10–18, see also adjective (lexical aspect) – activity 79, 89–91, 105, 214 – copula see copula – eventive 89–91, 106 – intransitive 23 – perception 75, 87 – position verb 88 – punctual 89–91 – selectional restrictions 80–81 – stative 88–91, 93–94 – transitive 214 weak and strong agreement 72–74, 116–118 weight 124, 164, 168–171 zero-derivation see derivation