Lexical Categories verbs nouns and adjectives phần 7 pdf

3.9 Are nouns universal? 185 are ambiguously nouns or adjectives crosslinguistically. The important point is that some words apparently must have a referential index, and other words can never have one; these are the unambiguous nouns and the unambiguous adjec- tives of Salish. A similar range of complex predicates is found in Straits Salish (Jelinek and Demers 1994: 708, ex. (28)) and in Wakashan languages (Jacobsen 1979; Wojdak 2001). Attributive constructions also reveal a noun–adjective distinction in Austronesian languages. For example, in Tukang Besi words like to’oge ‘big’ and woleke ‘rat’ can both be used with an article to form an argumental expres- sion ((180a)), potentially causing one to doubt that there is a difference in cat- egory. But to’oge can modify a true noun directly, as shown in (180b), whereas woleke cannot; a genitive particle is required between the two nouns ((180c)). (180) a te to’oge; te woleke (Donohue 1999: 78, 80) ART big ART rat ‘the big one; the rat’ b te woleke to’oge (Donohue 1999: 77) ART rat big ‘the big rat’ c te iku ∗ (nu) woleke (Donohue 1999: 80) ART tail GEN rat ‘the rat(’s) tail’ The ungrammaticality of (180c) without the genitive marker shows that words like woleke ‘rat’ must bear a referential index; this cannot be freely suppressed to give it the distribution of an adjective as well as that of a noun. 51 A second test of whether some words must have a referential index in these languages comes from verbalizing morphology. Section 3.8 showed that in languages with a noun–adjective distinction, it is normal for predicate ad- jectives to correspond to stative, inchoative, and causative verbs, but not for predicate nouns to do so. The reason is that the referential index of the noun cannot coexist with the theta-marked subject added by verbalizing morphol- ogy, by the Reference-Predication Constraint. If referential indices were only optionally associated with noun-like words in a particular language, then this asymmetry should disappear; all roots should be equally eligible for productive 51 Attributive constructions also point toward there being a noun–adjective distinction in Samoan, although the evidence is more subtle. Nouns that modify other nouns do not require a geni- tive marker in Samoan. But Mosel and Hovdhaugen (1992) point out an asymmetry in linear order: when a noun is modified by both a “noun” and an “adjective,” the order must be head noun-modifying noun-adjective, not head noun-adjective-modifying noun. I interpret this as showing that nouns can only combine with other noun projections by way of nonsyntactic root compounding, whereas adjectives can combine with nouns by syntactic merge. 186 Nouns as bearers of a referential index and semantically transparent verbalization. But this is not what we find in any of the languages with relevant derivational morphology. Launey (1981: 275) discusses two Nahuatl affixes – inchoative ya and causative –lia – which he describes as attaching only to “adjectives.” His examples have glosses like ‘become white,’ ‘become sour,’ ‘become green/fresh,’ ‘become yellow,’ ‘make something white,’ ‘make sad,’ and ‘become big’: (181) a Izt¯a-ya in tep¯e-tl white- INCH the mountain-NSF ‘The mountain became white.’ b O-quim-izt¯a-li in cepayahui-tl in t¯e-tepe’. PAST-3pO-white-CAUS the snow-NSF the PL-mountain ‘The snow has made the mountains white.’ These affixes apparently cannot attach to roots with clearly nominal meanings– the same asymmetry we find in languages like English. 52 Salish also has an inchoative derivation, produced by adding a glottal stop infix or a –p suffix to a root. This derivation too can apply to “adjectives,” but not to nouns, as shown in (182) (van Eijk and Hess 1986; Davis 1999). 53 (182)aza7Xw ‘to melt’, from zaXw ‘melted’ (adjectives) la7kw ‘get loose’ from lakw ‘loose, untied’ tsa-7-k ‘get cool’ from tsek.ts ´ ak ‘cool’ qwa-7-ez’ ‘go blue’, from qwez.qw ´ az ‘blue’ 52 Andrews (1975) describes another Nahuatl morpheme, -ti, as being a verbalizing suffix that can be added productively to nouns to create inchoative verbs meaning ‘to become (like) X.’ He implies that this is a relatively common process in Nahuatl, citing examples like tl ¯ ac-ti ‘to become a person, to be born’ and te ¯ o-pix-c ¯ a-ti ‘to become a priest.’ Launey’s (1981: 274) discussion of the same affix, however, gives a different impression. He lists ‘become’ as only the fourth gloss of this affix when it attaches to nouns; other glosses that he puts first are ‘to do,’ ‘to be for the moment,’ and ‘to behave like a.’ A typical example of his is ni-tequi-ti ‘I work’ (from tequi-tl ‘job, task’), which means ‘I do work,’ not ‘I became a job.’ I assume that Launey’s discussion is the more accurate and complete one. 53 Davis (1999) mentions briefly that there is another inchoative affix in Salish that attaches exclu- sively to nouns, the so-called “developmental” affix –wil’c: (i) a sama7-w ´ ıl’c ‘become a white person’ b sk’uk’mi7t-w ´ ıl’c ‘become a child’ While this further supports the point that there are category differences in Salish, it does call into question my generalization that nouns cannot productively form inchoative verbs. The striking difference between this affix and the one in the text is that the developmental affix is phonologically heavier, constituting a full syllable. Perhaps this shows that it is lexically a verb rather than a Pred, and it combines with the noun by true incorporation rather than conflation. In that case, the N root and the V morpheme count as two separate nodes in the syntax, and the noun root can continue to bear its referential index (cf. also note 41 on Yidin). The verbalization of predicate nouns is perfectly productive in Greenlandic; see note 42 for data and a tentative suggestion toward an analysis. 3.9 Are nouns universal? 187 b ∗ q ´ a-7-y’ecw ‘become a man’, from s-qaycw ‘man’ (nouns) ∗ k’u-7-k’wm’it ‘become a child’ from s-k’ ´ uk’wm’it ‘child’ There may not be a clear difference in the productivity of verbalizing “adjec- tives” and “nouns” in the Austronesian languages, both apparently being very common. But there is a predictable difference in the meaning of the verbali- zed form. Verbs that correspond to inherently adjectival roots in Tukang Besi have very simple and regular meanings, in which the state denoted by the root is predicated of the subject. The verbal form of to’oge ‘big’ means (unremarkably) ‘to be big,’ for example (Donohue 1999: 77). In contrast, the verbal form of a nounish word like ha’o ‘hammer’ means not ‘to be a hammer,’ but ‘to use a hammer.’ In the same way, the verbal form of ba’e ‘fruit’ means ‘to bear fruit,’ and the verbal form of hoti ‘food’ means not ‘to be food’ but ‘to give food or clothing to the poor’ (Donohue 1999: 81–82). This reconfirms that the two classes of roots have different grammatical properties, the one being free to take on a specifier directly, the others doing so only as the result of more complex and indirect lexical manipulations that remove or satisfy their referential index. This difference is detectable even in Huallaga Quechua, the discussion in Weber (1989) notwithstanding. Weber cited the two examples in (183) as evi- dence that there is no morphological difference between “nouns” like ‘stone’ and “adjectives” like ‘big’ in Quechua: (183) rumi-ya-n; hatun-ya-n. stone- INCH-3S big-INCH-3S ‘It becomes stone’ ‘It becomes big’ But ‘stone’ is a material-denoting word, which one expects to be ambiguous between noun and adjective. To clarify the situation, David Weber (personal communication) performed a computer search on a large text (the Bible) to pull out examples that contained the morpheme –ˇca, an affix that creates transitive verbs. This affix is commonly glossed as ‘cause to be,’ but this gloss turned out not to be very accurate. In four cases, it attached to a root that English eyes see as an adjective. In these cases, it does consistently mean ‘cause to be’; (184a) is typical. (184) a lanu-ˇca:- thin.round- VBZR ‘to make something thin’ (e.g. yarn, when spinning) b wamra-ˇca:- child- VBZR ‘to adopt someone’ (not: ‘to make someone a child’) 188 Nouns as bearers of a referential index c pampa-ˇca:- ground- VBZR ‘to bury something’ (not: ‘to make something be ground’) dkaˇci-ˇca:- salt- VBZR ‘to salt (meat), to put salt on’ (not: ‘to cause to be salt’) Weber also found approximately fifteen cases in which – ˇ ca: attached to a proto- typical noun root. In none of these examples does – ˇ ca: have a simple causative meaning, as shown by the representative examples in (184b,c,d). These have the same kinds of argument-like readings that nouns zero-derived into verbs have in English: (184c) is like Hale’s and Keyser’s (1993) location verbs (to corral the horses) and (184d) is like Hale’s and Keyser’s locatum verbs (to salt the meat). Quechua derivational patterns are thus sensitive to the same difference in categories as Nahuatl and Salish derivations are, once one digs beneath the surface. Summarizing all this material, I have shown that there is evidence that some words in each language considered may not have a referential index, and there is e vidence that some words in each language must have a referential index. For each language considered, there are at least two converging lines of evi- dence for this. Often there are also a few roots for which a referential index is optional, but that is true even in languages like English. Therefore, nouns seem to exist as a universally distinct lexical category after all. Furthermore, the grammatical consequences of being a noun are quite stable over this wide range of languages. These consequences can be masked in some situations by the presence of functional categories – Preds that make nouns look more verbal, and pronouns / determiners that make adjectives and verbs look more nominal. In languages in which both Pred and pronouns are systematically null, it is easy to get the impression that there is no difference in the lexical categories. For Salish, some Wakashan languages, and some Austronesian languages, this impression is magnified by two other quirks of the grammar: the fact that deter- miners happen to be required even with nouns, and the fact that tense and subject agreement are clitics rather than true affixes. The obligatoriness of determiners means that verbs and adjectives seem to be just as good arguments as nouns, since the crucial contrast in (171) does not show up as such. The clitic nature of tense and agreement means that they attach just as well to predicate nominals as to verbs, the extra Pred projection that usually blocks the attachment of T-related affixation to nouns having no effect on clitics attached in the PF component. This magnifies the impression that nouns are just as good predicates as verbs. 3.9 Are nouns universal? 189 None of these properties – null Preds, null pronouns, obligatory determiners, and tense particles that are PF clitics – is remarkable in itself, but appearing all together in the same languages they largely conceal the otherwise obvious dif- ferences in categories. Nevertheless, for each language, a clearly recognizable class of nouns emerges once we know where to look, guided by the fundamental definition of nouns given in (1). 4 Adjectives as neither nouns nor verbs 4.1 The essence of having no essence In chapter 2, I considered what distinguishes verbs from nouns and adjectives. The difference, I claimed, was that only verbs take a specifier, a syntactic position that is normally assigned a theme oragenttheta-role. This is a sharpened version of the widespread intuition that verbs are the prototypical predicates of natural language (see, for example, Croft [1991] and Bhat [1994]). In chapter 3, I turned to nouns, asking what distinguishes them from adjectives and verbs. The answer was that nouns alone have criteria of identity, which allows them to bear referential indices. This is a sharpened and generalized version of the common intuition that nouns are uniquely suited to the task of referring. Now it is time to look more closely at adjectives, not as a foil for the other categories, but in their own right. What distinctive property do adjectives have that underlies their various morphological and syntactic characteristics? The strongest and most interesting answer to this question would be to say that there is nothing special about adjectives. They are already distinguished from verbs by not licensing a specifier, and from nouns by not having a referential index. Ideally, this should be enough to completely characterize their behavior. Such a theory would preserve an important aspect of the Chomskian insight that one needs only two binary features to distinguishthree or four categories ( +/−N and +/−V from Chomsky [1970], or +/−Subj and +/−Obj from Jackendoff [1977]). Any additional features would be logically superfluous and would raise questions about why there are not more categories than there are. My particular theory contains an axiom that stipulates that there cannot be the equivalent of a +N, +V category, the Reference-Predication Constraint of chapter 3. One can, however, have a category that is −N, −V, and in this chapter I argue that is what adjectives are; one needs no new features and no new principles to account adequately for their basic properties across languages. This sharply distinguishes my approach from the descriptive and functionalist traditions, which often see adjectives as being by definition the prototypical modifiers of 190 4.1 The essence of having no essence 191 natural language (Croft 1991; Bhat 1994). My view is also distinguished from formal semantic attempts to characterize adjectives as being inherently gradable predicates (e.g. Larson and Segal [1995: 130–32], see also Kamp [1975] and Croft [1991]). Adjectives can be used as modifiers in many languages, and they can be compared, but I argue that these are derived properties of adjectives, not basic defining ones. To defend this view, I consider three syntactic environments in which only an adjective can appear. First, adjectives can be direct attributive modifiers of nouns, but nouns and verbs cannot be (section 4.2): (1)a ∗ a smart woman b ∗ a genius woman c ∗ a shine coin Second, adjectives can be the complements of degree heads like so, as, too, and how in English, but neither nominal nor verbal projections can be (section 4.3): (2) a Mary is too smart for her own good. b ∗ Mary is too a genius/a too genius for her own good. c ∗ If you polish it, the coin will too shine in the dark to miss. Third, adjectives canbe resultative secondary predicates, unlike nouns andverbs (section 4.4): (3) a They beat the metal flat. b ∗ They beat the metal a sword. c ∗ They polished the coin shine. These, then, are contexts in which adjectives do not form a natural class with either nouns or verbs. How can these environments select for adjectives, if adjectives have no distinctive properties to select for? The logic of my theory permits only one answer to this question: these must be structures in which the theta-role as- signing property of verbs and the index-bearing property of nouns causes them (independently) to run afoul of general conditions. When that is the case, ad- jectives emerge as the only category that can be used, not because of any posi- tive feature that the adjective has, but by default, because nothing disqualifies them. I develop this type of theory in the next three sections. Section 4.5 then considers the relationship between adjectives and adverbs, claiming that they are essentially the same category. Finally, section 4.6 looks at the question of whether all languages have one and only one category of adjective. I argue that the answer is “yes,” in spite of the conventional wisdom that this category is 192 Adjectives as neither nouns nor verbs the most prone to crosslinguistic variation (Dixon 1982; Schachter 1985; Bhat 1994). 4.2 Attributive modification 4.2.1 Framing the issues The most obvious distinctive characteristic of adjectives is that they modify nouns directly, in the so-called attributive construction. Nouns and verbs can not do this. (4) gives more examples illustrating this in English: (4) a a rich man; a shiny coin b ∗ a wealth man; a genius man (OK: a man of wealth, a boy-genius) c ∗ a shine coin; a hunger man (OK: a coin that shines, a shining coin) The same generalization holds in Edo ((5)), in Tukang Besi ((6) [Donohue 1999]), and in a great many other languages. (5)a`okp`ı´az`ur`o . z`ur`o . . (Edo) man lazy/foolish A ‘the/a lazy man’ b ∗ `okp`ı´az`ur´o . (OK: `okp`ı´an`e´o . z´u!r´o . ) man be.foolish V man that he be.foolish(REL) ‘the laze man’ ‘the/a man that is foolish’ c ∗ `okp`ı´a`oz`ur`o . (OK: `okp`ı´a´o . gh´e`oz`ur`o . ; eke . n-`o . kh´o . kh`o . ) man laziness man of laziness egg-chicken ‘the/a laziness man’ ‘chicken egg’ (6) a te woleke to’oge (Tukang Besi) ART rat big ‘the big rat’ b ∗ te woleke tode (OK: te woleke t-um-ode) ART rat flee ART rat REL-flee ‘the flee rat’ ‘the fleeing rat’ c ∗ te iku woleke (OK: te iku nu woleke) ART tail rat ART tail of rat ‘the rat(’s) tail’ ‘the tail of the rat’ This is, indeed, the most common way for descriptive grammars to recognize a distinct class of adjectives: see, for example, Smeets (1989) on Mapuche, Heath (1984) on Nunggubuyu, 1 Feldman (1986) on Awtuw, Renck (1975) on Yagaria, Dixon (1977) on Yidin, Daley (1985) on Tzutujil, among others. 1 In Nunggubuyu there is the interesting wrinkle that the attributive adjective–noun combination shows up as a morphological compound. Thus, Heath says that N–A compounds like ani-dunggu- runggal ( NCL-word-big) ‘big words’ are found in the language, but N–N compounds are rare. 4.2 Attributive modification 193 Nouns and verbs can, of course, modify nouns in less direct ways, if they are embedded in the right additional functional structure. For example, verbs can be the main predicate of a relative clause that modifies the head noun in all three languages. Nouns can become modifiers when they are embedded in a prepositional phrase headed by of in English, ´ o . gh ´ e (which often reduces to just a floating high tone) in Edo, or nu in Tukang Besi. Nouns can also modify other nouns within a compound, where compounds can often be distinguished from syntactic modification on morphological and phonological grounds (e.g. the special stress pattern of many English compounds). Finally, nouns and verbs can modify nouns if they are transformed into adjectives by derivational morphology, as in a wealthy man or a shiny coin. 2 This range of options is available to adjectives as well: they can modify a head noun by being embedded in a relative clause (a man who is rich), by forming a compound (a blackbird), or by being derived into another adjective (a reddish flower). But adjectives also have an option that is unique to them: that of being merged directly with the head noun, with no obvious functional structure mediating the relationship. 3 (5a) shows that even the Pred head (spelled out overtly as y ´ e in Edo) is not present in the attributive construction. This then gives us a descriptive characterization of the attributive construction: it consists of a(n almost) bare head in tight syntactic construction with a noun or noun projection. And the only heads that can, in point of fact, be in such a configuration are adjectives. I already mentioned in section 4.1 that some functionalist authors like Croft (1991), Hengeveld (1992), and Bhat (1994) take the ability to modify nouns to be the defining – or at least the characteristic, prototypical – property of ad- jectives. In this, they follow traditional grammar. When medieval grammarians such as Peter Helias and Thomas of Erfurt first began to distinguish “adjectival nouns” from “substantive nouns,” it was precisely because their new emphasis on syntax led them to realize that the one word class is essentially syntactically 2 Participial forms of the verb can also modify nouns, as in a shining light. Two analyses of these are compatible with my theory: the participle suffix could be (among other things) a derivational affix that forms adjectives (Borer 1990), or the participle could be a kind of reduced relative clause (Kayne 1995). I leave a detailed study of participles to future research. 3 There are languages such as Tagalog (Norvin Richards, personal communication) and Tzutujil (Daley 1985) in which a linking morpheme appears between an attributive adjective and a mod- ified noun: (i) k’ay-i nequun (Tzutujil) bitter- LK thing ‘a bitter thing’ (compare k’ay ‘it is bitter’) One might think this is a functional head involved in modification somehow. In Tzutujil, however, the presence of this linker is phonologically conditioned: it appears after one syllable adjectives but not after longer ones. It could thus be purely a PF phenomenon. None of the languages I know well has a linker, so I take it to be of marginal significance and ignore it here. 194 Adjectives as neither nouns nor verbs independent whereas the other occurs essentially in construction with another noun (Robins 1989: 95). 4 Bhat (1994: ch. 12) legitimately criticizes genera- tive grammar for being preoccupied with predicate adjectives, in which the adjectives are partially “verbalized” (for me, by the presence of a Pred) while neglecting the attributive construction that is more characteristic of adjectives. Pursuing this intuition would presumably lead one to identify some special pos- itive property of adjectives that underlies their ability to be attributive modifiers. Nevertheless, I believe that it is wrong to make the ability to modify nouns the defining or characteristic property of the category adjective. It is well known that English has adjectives that cannot be used as attributive modifiers, but only as predicates, as shown in (7a) and (7b). Other adjectives can be used attributively or predicatively, but only with a substantial change of meaning (Bolinger 1967; Siegel 1980). (7) a The dog is asleep. ∗ The asleep dog. b Mary is ready. #The ready woman. c John is responsible (e.g. for losing the report). =The responsible man. Such purely predicative adjectives are not uncommon across languages. The Athapaskan language Slave is an extreme case, in which all adjectives are restricted to predicate position, as complement to the copular verb; adjectives are never used as attributive modifiers in direct construction with a noun (Rice 1989: ch. 21). (8) a Yenene (be-gho) sho hili (Rice 1989: 389–90) woman 3-of proud/happy 3-is ‘The woman is happy/proud (of him/her).’ b ∗ yenene sho (Keren Rice, personal communication) woman proud/happy ‘a proud/happy woman’ In order to use a word like sho as a restrictive modifier of the noun, one must use a relative clause – the Slave equivalent of ‘a woman that is proud’ – which contains a copula and a complementizer as well as the adjective. One can very well say that the adjectives in (7) and (8) are not prototypical adjectives, 4 In antiquity, the parts of speech were distinguished primarily on the basis of inflection, and adjectives happen to take the same range of number, gender, and case forms as nouns in Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit. For this reason, the distinction between nouns and adjectives was usually not noticed before the Middle Ages. [...]... build a theory of adjectives around the property of noun modification It would be better to do it the other way around, and derive the possibility of noun modification (for most adjectives) from a more general theory of what adjectives are 4.2.2 Explaining the basic restrictions On my conception, adjectives are simply lexical heads that are not nouns or verbs Within my system, that adjectives alone can... also be expressed by an adjoined adverb, as shown in (40c) Adjectives are special only in that they have another way of 214 Adjectives as neither nouns nor verbs fixing this lexical semantic parameter, provided by the dedicated degree heads. 17 The correct generalization is not that all and only adjectives are gradable, but rather that only adjectives can have their grade specified by a functional head... (see note 9), just as the difference between unergative and unaccusative first verbs is destroyed by restructuring The fact that attributive adjectives cannot take a complement fits into this pattern, since restructuring verbs also cannot take complements distinct from those of the verbs they restructure with 206 Adjectives as neither nouns nor verbs The woman is tall There is, however, a line of semantically... difference between attributive adjectives and predicative adjectives Russian, for example, has “short form” adjectives that are used only predicatively and “long form” adjectives that are used attributively: (29) a Dom novyj/ nov (Pereltsvaig 2000) house new(long)/new(short) ‘The house is new.’ ∗ b Novyj/ nov dom stoit na gore new(long)/new(short) house stands on hill ‘The new house stands on a hill.’ Siegel’s... some New Guinean languages, Mapuche, Abaza, and many others Second, we saw in chapter 2 that predicate adjectives are not of category at all; this view wrongly blurs the distinction between adjectives and verbs and fails to account for the differences between them that are revealed by unaccusativity diagnostics and other morphosyntactic tests If predicate adjectives are not of category , it... predicate adjectives are completely uninflected is somewhat striking, given that Slave is otherwise a language rich in agreement inflections 212 4.3 Adjectives as neither nouns nor verbs Adjectives and degree heads Another distinctive property of adjectives is that they are selected by a certain class of functional heads, known as degree heads In English, this class includes the particles how, too, so, and. .. tokens were predicate adjectives Croft acknowledges that this is only weak support for his view that modification is the defining function of adjectives Other counts put the percentage of predicative adjectives even higher: Thompson (1988: 174 ) and Hengeveld (1992: 59) found that 68 percent of adjectives were used predicatively, and only 32 percent were used attributively Some functions of adjectives are doubtless... one lexical category, corresponding to the traditional adjective Rather, there are two fundamentally different categories: attributive adjectives and predicative adjectives Within Siegel’s Categorial Grammar assumptions, the two are assigned to very different types Attributive adjectives combine with a common noun to form a new common noun phrase; for Siegel, they are of category Predicative adjectives, ... type as ordinary intransitive verbs; they are (they take an entity – the subject – and produce something that has a truth value – a clause) In principle, these have no more in common than any other two categories Siegel could analyze Slave as a language that has only the adjectives and Vata as a language that has only the adjectives Russian has both categories, with a rule of derivational... applies, reanalyzing the adjective and noun as a single complex head There are a number of syntactic similarities between A+N constructions and the V+V restructuring studied by Rizzi (1982) and others For example, the NP cannot be moved away, stranding the A, just as VP cannot move, stranding the restructuring verb Also, the distinction between unergative and unaccusative adjectives is neutralized in attributive . functional categories – Preds that make nouns look more verbal, and pronouns / determiners that make adjectives and verbs look more nominal. In languages in which both Pred and pronouns are systematically. inflection, and adjectives happen to take the same range of number, gender, and case forms as nouns in Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit. For this reason, the distinction between nouns and adjectives. as neither nouns nor verbs 4.1 The essence of having no essence In chapter 2, I considered what distinguishes verbs from nouns and adjectives. The difference, I claimed, was that only verbs take