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  • Adjectives: Formal analyses in syntax and semantics
  • Norbert Corver
Adjectives: Formal analyses in syntax and semantics. Ed. by Patricia Cabredo Hofherr and Ora Matushansky. (Linguistics today 153.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2010. Pp. vii, 335. ISBN 9789027255365. $158 (Hb).

It seems fair to say that compared to other lexical categories, notably verbs and nouns, adjectives have received relatively little attention in the formal linguistic study of human language. A volume on the syntax and semantics of adjectives is therefore very welcome. This volume consists of two parts: Part 1, ‘Syntax’, contains four contributions, and Part 2, ‘Semantics’, contains five. The range of topics covered by these nine contributions is quite broad, but there is also some overlap in the issues addressed by the various articles. A volume covering such a wide variety of adjectival issues may run the risk of lacking coherence. This, however, is not the case, among other reasons because of the informative introductory chapter by Patricia Cabredo Hofherr, ‘Adjectives: An introduction’. This introduction nicely summarizes several major issues that have been dealt with so far in studies on the syntax and semantics of adjectives, and makes clear how the articles in the volume contribute to those issues. I believe that the coherence of the volume might have been even greater if at those places where possible and appropriate the authors would have referred to each other’s contributions. For example, two articles (Aljović, Babby) deal with long- and short-form adjectives in Slavic languages. It would have been interesting and helpful to the reader if points of divergence or convergence in their analyses were pointed out more explicitly. A similar remark could be made about the two articles that deal with the semantic properties of superlative adjectives (Gutiérrez-Rexach, Sleeman). That said, these considerations should not deflect from the fact that this volume is a very interesting collection of articles that provides the reader with a rich source of information about the syntax and semantics of adjectives. This richness also includes the variety of languages covered by the various articles in the volume. Data are presented from English, French, Spanish, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, Russian, Hebrew, and Mandarin Chinese.

Part 1 of the book, ‘Syntax’, opens with Nadira Aljović’s ‘Syntactic positions of attributive adjectives’ (29–52). She discusses the noun-phrase internal placement of two different forms of adjectives in Serbo-Croatian: short adjectives (SA) like star-a (old-gen.sg.m/n.nominal) ‘old’ and long adjectives (LA) like sta:r-og(a) (old.gen.sg.m/n.nominal-gen.sg.m/n.pronominal). The former can be used predicatively; the latter cannot. As for their attributive use, Aljović argues that the two forms occupy different syntactic positions within the containing nominal expression. More specifically, SAs occupy a position adjoined to NP, whereas LAs occupy the specifier position of a functional category (FP) dominating NumP. Evidence for this structural distinction comes from differences in grammatical behavior regarding NP-ellipsis, the interpretive properties of coordinated adjectives, and ordering restrictions on a sequence of multiple adjectives. The different configurational analyses of the two adjectival forms also account for their different behavior with respect to agreement morphology.

The syntax of long and short adjectives is also the topic of Leonard H. Babby’s contribution, ‘The syntactic differences between long and short forms of Russian adjectives’ (53–84). The two morphological forms (e.g. long form (LF) vkusn-oe (good-lf.nom.n) ‘good/delicious’, short form (SF) vkusn-o (good-sf.nom.n) ‘good/delicious’) are in complementary distribution. The SF typically appears in primary predication configurations involving a copular verb (Vino bylo vkusn-o (wine.nom.n was.n good.sf.nom.n) ‘the wine was good’); and the LF is found in secondary predication configurations, comparable to English Andrej returned home hungry and he ate the meat raw. Babby claims that LF-adjectives and SF-adjectives have different phrasal projections. More specifically, an SF-adjective carries an external role, which is assigned small-clause internally to the subject that occupies the specifier position of an inflectional phrase afP (the small clause), which is headed by the adjectival inflection that takes AP...

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