Cognitive motivation in English complex intensifying adjectives

Constructional Intensifying Adjectives in Italian

Grading is a primary cognitive operation that has an important expressive function. Information on degree is grammatically relevant and constitutes what Lazard (2006) calls a primary domain of grammaticalization: According to typological studies (Cuzzolin & Lehmann, 2004), many languages of the world have in fact at their disposal multiple grammatical devices to express gradation. In Italian, t...

English Nouns English Coarse English Verbs English Adjectives

Functions of attributive adjectives in English

This is a paper about premodification in the English noun phrase, focusing on functions of attributive adjectives. Modification in general is an issue that has received comparatively little attention in linguistic research, at least outside the field of syntax (see eg Frawley 1992: 437); Although there are some systematic descriptions of premodifier functions to be found in the literature, much...

Predicate-Argument Structure of English Adjectives

This paper will argue the following points. 1) What is a semantic status of prepositional phrases in such sentences as "Tom is good at tennis," "It is wise of Tom to go there," "This book is easy for John to read. "? 2) What is the semantic status of to infinitive (henceforth, to VP) in the following sentences : "He is honest to bring back the money," "He is sure to win." 3) Is there a semantic...

On the Semantics of Domain Adjectives in English

Crucial interaction: EUect of position weaker for items from Class I (.42) than Class II (1.02), t = 2.72, p < 0.05; while this diUerence between a/b conditions not signiVcant, c was rated worse than every other condition. Issue: DAS cannot be uniformly paraphrased as elided RRCs, cf. B. Schwarz (2005); Blöhdorn (2009). (6) The captain sailed every passage possible | navigable a. it was possibl...