Restrictive vs. Nonrestrictive Modification and Evaluative Predicates

This paper is devoted to a particular aspect of the interpretation of evaluative adjectives (marvelous, horrible), that is, adjectives that are compatible with subjective attitude verbs like find in the construction find x adj (e.g. find marvelous) and give rise to the so-called ‘faultless disagreement’ pattern. 1 Evaluative adjectives have often been claimed to manifest a strong, and even exclusive, preference for the nonrestrictive reading (henceforth the ‘nonrestrictive bias hypothesis’). For French for instance, Milner (1978) :301 claims that adjectives that he calls ‘affectifs’ (abominable ‘awful’, horrible ‘horrible’) cannot be used in a restrictive or anaphorical way. For Spanish, Demonte (2008) : 71 argues that what she calls ‘extreme degree adjectives’ (horrible ‘horrible’, necio ‘stupid’, espantoso ‘awful’) and ‘qualitative superlative adjectives’ (maravilloso ‘wonderful’, magnífico ‘magnificent’) are predicative nonrestrictive modifiers. For Catalan, CastroviejoMiró and Schwager (2008) :184 assume that adjectives like beautiful are often understood as non-restrictive. For German, Umbach (2012b) claims that evaluative predicates often cannot be used restrictively. The claim has also been extended to adverbials derived from these adjectives. For instance, Castroviejo-Miró